The XBMC Project Will Now Be Called Kodi

An anonymous reader writes: Citing the problems caused by the lack of legal control over the current name and its long outdated origins as the reasons for the change, The Xbox Media Center team announced that they will switch the project's name to Kodi when version 14 is released later this year. If you're wondering how they picked the name Kodi, here's what they said: "We considered a TON of names. We had a number of requirements for the new name, such as being reasonably pronounceable in various languages and not be a mouthful to say, not be used as a trademark for someone else's media-related product, be easy to remember, etc. The group came up with a list of names and had our lawyer go over them. We then got back a smaller list that had been checked for various legal issues, and then we voted on the final name."

Comments

Like the German discount store Kodi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good choice, guys.

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kobi works well enough.

Obviously not well enough since you couldn't even remember the correct name.

Re: Like the German discount store Kodi?

[NemosomeN]

Stop being an asshole. They aren't even using the name yet, so it's not surprise that people aren't familiar with it yet. Once Godi is released and people are using it, you can try to gauge how memorable the name is.

This naming trend has to stop

[epyT-R]

Why is it that OSS projects always seem to pick names that are, at best, obscure, and at worst, completely nondescriptive, yet have cutesy sounding names? I think it started somewhere around 2000. Please stop. Pick more functional names so I don't have to explain to people, "no, dolphin is the file manager and konqueror is the browser.'

This also applies to libraries too. For example, anyone know what 'liborc', 'libnettle', 'libenchant', 'libmagic' or 'libcanberra' are without looking it up? I just picked these at random from /usr/lib. There are plenty more.

Stop. Using. Cutesy. Names.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[Charliemopps]

This is the post Google age. You have to pick a nonsensical name so it will show up uniquely in a Google search. I'm a musician for example, and the days of naming your band something like "The Doors" is dead. That name would literally kill any chance you had at success in todays world.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[arielCo]

Zune. Bing. Works. Visio. Vizact.

And lastly, Bob.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[ihtoit]

Access (obviously a password management tool). Excel (clearly a standardised testing suite). Powerpoint (specialised electrical/electronic interface tool). SQL (who the hell knows what this is?). Outlook (Ah, this is obvious - a weather app).

Janus, Snowball, O'Hare, Memphis, Daytona, Cairo*, Whistler*, Longhorn, Vienna.

*Cairo was the codename for NT4.0 and Whistler the codename for xp, but x and p are the Greek letters chi and rho. Mind blowed yet?

I like the OpenOffice/LibreOffice naming convention for the suite components: Write, Draw, Impress, Base, Calc, Math. I mean, how user friendly do you want it?

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[ihtoit]

ah bollocks, time for the second choice then: The Roof Shingles.

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[ihtoit]

a FUFMe programming interface?

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[BronsCon]

Is it cool if I claim to know you? Then, I'll know someone who uses Visio, which will make it the exception that proves the rule :)

Re:This naming trend has to stop

[dbraden]

Nice, you now have Karnal knowledge!

Redefine

[zAPPzAPP]

Couldn't they have just redefined the acronym?

'Xenon Based Media Center'.. something something... It does not have to make sense. Just shorten it back to XBMC. There. No more trademark violation.

We don't even know what the X in xbox stands for either. No one cares.

Re:Redefine

[Sertis]

In the spirit of GNU, they should just make it Xbmc Based Media Center

sounds like an outpost planet

[turkeydance]

i blame Exxon, they started it. Esso was so sublime.

Kodi means flag in Tamil.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

There was this long discussion in that site about the meaning of Kodi and whether or not it is suitable for this package. Kodi means flag, (the flappy thing that flutters from a flagpole flag, not flag meaning getting tired). That is if you say kodi like you say "midi" in the midi-skirt. If you say it more like ko-die it would mean an umbrella or a donation. I don't know much else about the software.

Re:Why shouldn't something for the XBox...

[BronsCon]

Because it hasn't been for the XBox for quite some time now.

Vizio

[tepples]

Visio sounds like "vision", as in "having a vision", which is exactly what the software facilitates the development of. Easy.

To me, Vizio means "TVs and computer monitors", like the VX32L TV that I'm using as a second monitor for my laptop as I type this very comment. And Vizio makes smart TVs, whose firmware would compete with what is now called Kodi.

Re:Why shouldn't something for the XBox...

[Seq]

According to the xbmc4xbox wiki, it's a fork of xbmc as mainline support for the xbox was removed.

XBMC4Xbox is a third-party developer spin-off project of XBMC for Xbox, with still active development and support of the Xbox. This project was created as a fork of XBMC for Xbox as a separate project to continue having a version of XBMC for the Xbox hardware platform, and was initially started by a few members from the original XBMC project in order to fully breakout the removed Xbox branch support from the official XBMC project and let it continue as a totally separate project, which was announced on the 27 of May 2010.