14 DAY TRIAL // The developers of XBMC have decided to change the name of their software into Kodi starting with the version 14.
Not too many people realize this, but XBMC actually stands for Xbox Media Center, which is a throwback to the old days when it actually had Xbox support. Regardless of the names that it had over the years, XBMC has been around of quite some time. The developers have made the decision to change the name because the today’s software doesn’t have much in common with the original application, with a few exceptions.
Changing the name from XBMC to Kodi won’t have any really impact on its users. The application will follow the same development trend, no matter what the current name will be. It’s also worth noting that the change will not arrive with the next stable version, which will be 13.2 Gotham, but with the next 14.x branch.
“We are excited to announce that the media center software we’ve all loved for so many years will have a new name, starting with version 14. Instead of XBMC 14, we’d like to introduce you to Kodi 14.”
“While the software still acts as a media center, it also hosts addons, loads games, streams content to and from numerous devices, and can ultimately act as a complete replacement for whatever platform it is hosted on. Indeed, XBMC today is far more an Entertainment Center than a simple Media Center. In essence both the “XB” and “MC” simply don’t make a whole lot of sense anymore,” said the developers.
The makers of XBMC have also explained that there were some legal problems with the name. As you can imagine, it’s difficult to have a software called Xbox Media Center, which is free, and that doesn’t have to do with Microsoft. Surprisingly, they managed to keep the name for quite some time, but the new Kodi name will fix all current and potential naming problems.
To make things even more interesting, Kodi 14.x actually has an Alpha available for download and the users can start testing it right now. It’s still a long way from the finished product and it’s likely that the upcoming 13.2 release will be far more interesting, for now at least.
As it stands right now, users can download XBMC 13.1, which is the stable release, XBMC 13.2 Beta 1, which is still under development, and the latest Kodi 14 Alpha 2, which still has a long way to go.