Also, to celebrate 40 years of Star Wars movie saga

Jan 9, 2017 23:29 GMT  ·  By

To celebrate 40 years of the Star Wars saga, the Kodi developers announced earlier today the codename of the next major release of their open-source and multiplatform media center.

As many of you probably know from our regular reports, Kodi 17 "Krypton" is currently in heavy development with a first Release Candidate snapshot out of the door at the end of 2016, but the team was already looking to codename the next major version, Kodi 18. In early December, they asked the community to vote for the Kodi 18 code name, which should have started with the letter L.

Normally, the Kodi team picks the codename for a new Kodi media center release from the top 5 or top 10 suggestions voted by the community, but they decided to dub Kodi 18 as "Leia," after the Princess Leia character in the Star Wars movie saga, which was played by the late Carrie Fisher who died on December 27, 2016.

"Leia wasn’t a top choice in the user suggestion threads. She wasn’t even a top ten choice. But, on the week it came time to vote, we learned of the tragic passing of Carrie Fisher, and thought there could not be a more fitting tribute than to name a version of Kodi after one of the most butt-kicking princesses in cinematic history," said Nathan Betzen.

Development of Kodi 18 "Leia" to start in spring 2017

The Kodi team is known to be a big fan of the Star Wars movie saga, which will celebrate on May 25 this year 40 years since the first film played in theaters around the world. In celebration of this major milestone, and in honor of the late Carrie Fisher, they are codenaming Kodi 18 as "Leia." However, it will take some time until Kodi 18 enters development.

Considering the fact that Kodi 17 "Krypton" was recently promoted to the RC (Release Candidate) state, it should be a couple of months until it hits stable, and after that, Kodi 18 "Leia" will enter development. If you're lucky, we might even be able to play with the first Alpha preview just in time for the 40th anniversary of Star Wars. We'll keep you informed as more work is planned.