This is a little later in the development cycle than would normally be the case, but I’m sure you’ll understand why.

It’s traditional, as we move towards the release of a new version of Kodi, to begin the process of naming what will become its successor. In recent years, “Leia” gave way to “Matrix”, which moved aside for “Nexus”, and then on to our current version, “Omega”. There’s a clue there to the pattern, so P-something it is.

Our normal process would be to ask the forums and team for suggestions, edit these down to a shortlist, and then run an internal poll and choose a winner. However, the shortlisting was done a little quickly this time, and we ended up picking a P-name that was already in use for a problematic add-on (arrr, shiver me timbers, and all that – absolutely not a connection we’d wish to make). The obvious solution was to skip that one, then, and move to the second choice – except that turned out to be the name of a legitimate streaming service. And the third? Another problematic add-on.

As the team deliberated the need for another poll, we heard sad news about a colleague and team member whose contributions to Kodi have been so immensely valuable. His death at such a young age gave everyone pause, and with his name just-so-happening to begin with exactly the right letter, it seemed fitting to mark his passing with more than just a blog post.

So with muted fanfare, we memorialise our good friend, and continue development towards Kodi v22, “Piers”.

You will, of course, hear more about this as the development branch takes shape, and you can follow development on GitHub as you wish.

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In 2015, Kodi’s default theme Confluence was growing long in the tooth. Most of the really exciting skins from that time accomplished far more, and Confluence was ultimately a 2009 update to an existing skin called MediaStream that was itself several years old. It was time for Confluence to retire. We needed something new that adhered to the UX best practices of the time.

I proposed some wireframes based on Google’s Material Design that were pretty vague, but I hoped would be enough to get us started. Almost immediately, members of our team of skilled skinners (Phil65 and Piers) jumped on the task. I made my initial suggestion early on the 17th of June, and Piers had already mocked up a complete home page later that day. His post at that time introducing the mockup had me chuckling for days. Once an idea struck him, the guy worked tirelessly to see it through.

By the 18th, a day later, Piers’ mockup was revamped and looked remarkably complete. Unfortunately, those early designs have been lost to the internet gods, but we do still have a screenshot of the first alpha created in August that remained quite true to those early mockups.

By September, Estuary was pretty well complete with two primary themes, the 3D-styled curial and the flat style which remains the default to this day. Piers and Phil65, along with several other skinners, notably BigNoid, had introduced a variety of features including the ability to select different color styles, like pink. The team also created a separate second skin designed specifically to work for mobile devices.

In 2016, these skins were officially released with Kodi 17 to universal praise within the community (for those interested in history, you can find the original blog post here). The work done by Piers and the team on UX/UI in 2015 and 2016 cannot be understated. They developed a lasting and original skin that remains in use to this very day.

We recently learned that Piers passed away. He was 37. He will be missed by those of us who worked with him on this project. We cannot emphasize enough his contribution to software seen and used by millions of people worldwide.

Thank you for everything, Piers.

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Hi, everyone – I’m Keith, and while I now find myself President of the Kodi Foundation, my initial involvement with Kodi goes way back, as a humble user. Since our 20th anniversary came and went, I’ve been meaning to write a bit of a look back on how we got here – how I got here. This is the story of my – and the project’s – journey.

In the Beginning…

In 2002, a couple guys saw the potential of being able to watch media on their own terms, through what was a new type of device: a “connected” TV device. They wanted to bring many things you’d traditionally need a computer for to the living room, operating it from the couch without needing a keyboard or mouse, controlling events through what they called a 10 foot interface because, well, it was an interface you could sit 10 feet away from.

While special-purpose devices already existed, they usually were things like DVD players, and they weren’t “connected” to anything else or even had the ability to hook up to a network. Indeed, even the TiVo, one of the most impressive devices of the time, lacked an Ethernet port. One of the creators of Samba, an open-source interoperability application to share files between Linux and Windows, eventually figured out how to add a network port to a TiVo; however, even though it was the first mass marketed consumer Linux-based appliance, it was still very much a closed, walled garden.

The Xbox changed all that. In 2001, Microsoft released their first console, leveraging their work on x86 platforms to build out a version of Windows specialized for running games. The familiarity allowed game developers to easily port to the new gaming console; the fact that Microsoft sold them at a loss, knowing they would make it back in game sales, ensured rapid consumer adoption. Luckily for the hackers out there, there were more similarities than differences when compared to something they were already very familiar with: the standard Windows personal computer. Very quickly, folks like Bunnie figured out ways around the security, achieving the holy grail in record time for a console: the ability to run untrusted code.

Long before we had the Raspberry Pi, OpenWrt routers and other tinkerer’s dream “open” environments, Xbox hacking quickly became the fastest route to general-purpose, connected computing. The availability of powerful, affordable, standardized hardware enabled an entire community of hackers wanting to break out of Microsoft’s walled garden and run whatever code they wanted on their Xbox. Emulation, or the ability to trick old games such as NES and Sega Genesis into believing the Xbox is the same hardware, was one of the first big use cases, since we now had something powerful enough that hooked up to a regular TV and offered a standard controller.

XBMC is Born

While many folk worked on getting Linux and various other things running, the project that attracted me the most was Xbox Media Player. This brought the ability to play compressed media to the Xbox: up until this point, only a computer could play these files, and if you were one of the those super early adopters who had network cables strung across your house, you could now even stream it over the network or the Internet (which was definitely not fast enough for video… yet!).

XBMP came out in 2002 as the convergence of two separate closed source apps natively written with the Microsoft Xbox Development Kit by d7o3g4q (a.k.a. duo) and RUNTiME. As many at the time pointed out, since it was leveraging GPL code, it likely needed to be open source. At the same time, another developer – Frodo – had created YAMP as “Yet Another Media Player”; when these projects also converged at the end of 2002, Xbox Media Center, or XBMC, was born. While the initial beta was closed source, the developers quickly open sourced it and it’s been open source ever since.

XBMC v2, released September 2006

(You can even have a read of the original manual if you like!)

I was a dedicated Xbox user at the time, for everything besides gaming. I diligently connected to #xbins on EFnet to find the latest binary release and watched in awe the quick iteration these folks were doing, adding so many incredible features, even supporting things like CD+G for Karaoke. You have to realise how groundbreaking a library mode was, allowing you to peruse your stored media collection while everyone else – even Netflix – was still renting DVDs by post or picking them up in strip mall stores.

The developers themselves deserve a ton of recognition: their tireless pursuit of the best media experience, one that was infinitely customizable and powerful and something they were proud of. While most have moved on to other things, a few, like spiff, remain around since those early days, and are still here to let others know why certain things are why they are and even to still occasionally contribute code.

Success Has Many Parents

But these folks did not do this in a vacuum: as the saying goes, “it takes a village”. FFmpeg, for example, being the Internet’s Swiss Army knife for video, handles so much of the core rendering and playback. In developer parlance, we call these ‘dependencies’ but I prefer to think of these types of libraries as the backbone. Without the ability to stand on the shoulder of these mammoth libraries, XBMC devs would never have been able to focus so much on the skinning and user experience. While XBMC was initially heavily based on mplayer, which is now known as mpv, it has evolved into being closely tied to FFmpeg.

XBMC v9 “Babylon”, released May 2009

There are also countless other contributors – to the code, artwork, forum, and beyond – who absolutely have to be acknowledged. It’s been a long journey from those early applications thru XBMP and XBMC to today’s Kodi, but it’s clear that the application wouldn’t be what it is without the add-on ecosystem, translators, community moderators, volunteer artists, system admins, database admins, and many more.

And while devs have came and gone, the project has lived on, continuing to expand to every major platform it possibly can, even to a couple of smart TVs now. Highly unusual – maybe unique – as an open-source application that started on a Microsoft product before spreading further to so many other, disparate platforms, Kodi has now even come full circle to be back in the Xbox Store (although, somewhat ironically, Microsoft platforms have become increasingly challenging for us because we lack current developer knowledge). We still try to bring all the functionality we can to every platform we can: you’ve got a weird mod file, from your demoscene days? Still got a pile of FLVs? We got you. What about wanting to stream Widevine-enabled Internet content with an open-source project? Yeah, we see you and we care.

So, Here We Are

One of the parts that some don’t realize is since our initial development, we’ve always been a monolithic application, meaning the entire codebase must be ported to the desired platform. I’ve said we’re the “largest open-source multimedia project” for years, half-jokingly, but I mean this by the literal lines of code that it takes to run it.

XBMC v10 “Dharma”, released December 2010

And we’ve stayed volunteer. As a consumer-oriented open-source project, no company has ever sponsored more than a port or a feature; indeed, since the nonprofit foundation behind it isn’t setup to be engaged, at worst companies have simply given some money to an individual to work on a feature. Even this is definitely not the norm: 99.9% of Kodi has been built out of passion and love for multimedia and the desire to have an open-source platform for which people can decide the look and feel and customize to their liking, in both hardware and software terms.

I do have to call out our longest and biggest sponsor and partner, Flirc: their support with this project has been unwavering.

This is truly software on your own terms, and to me, is the essence of open source.

Wrapping it All Up

Sorry this became so wordy, but I’ve been wanting to write a “20 year blog post” for so long, and it’s now been nearly 22 years since XBMP binaries first became available. Time flies. I hope this blog helped you stop for a moment and marvel at how far we’ve come, even if you’ve only been a user since we’ve been called Kodi: the developers see themselves in you and you’re the reason why we’ve kept hacking on this project for so long.

So, let’s raise our glasses for over 20 years, and, yes, we still have MANY lines of original, first generation code! We have to thank everyone who’s been involved and supported us: everyone who submitted a pull request or posted a message on the forum, all the devs who have tirelessly worked on the ‘dependency’ libraries that mean so much to us, and especially the official Team XBMC and Kodi Foundation developers. You folks, who continue to iterate, tweak and build the future of this platform, enable millions to consume media without having to care about how it works and why.

XBMC v13 “Gotham”, released May 2014

And while you’re here, we made a T-shirt to commemorate this moment! It (hopefully) has every team member on it. As we said, we’re volunteers, and the only money our non-profit receives is thru donations, merchandise and the only licensed product we’ve ever been a part of, Flirc’s Kodi Raspberry Pi case.

Take your pick from a dark T-shirt, a light T-shirt, a pillow or something else from the whole store.

Please, purchase something, and help us to keep thriving for the next 20 years; I personally plan our Devcons, and we might not be able to get together in 2025 without help from people like you, so anything you can do to help, we really appreciate it.

Oh, and while I’m asking: if anyone knows any non profit open source lawyers that are prepared to help us with things like trademark registration and maintenance of the Foundation, please send them our way! Legal-at-kodi-dot-tv.

Thanks again. I have no idea what the next 20 years will bring, or whether I will personally still be involved, but, for as long as developers and users are still interested, I know we’ll all try our best to support it.

Keith Herrington
President, Kodi Foundation

(There’s some further history here and here, if you’re interested).

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The Team Kodi PPA has long been a staple for Ubuntu (and similar) users wishing to use more recent, and less adulterated, versions of Kodi.

It is with sadness that the team has come to a decision to officially retire the PPA due to the overhead of maintaining it.

We want to express our sincere thanks to wsnipex for maintaining it for so many years, tirelessly making it available to countless users in the pursuit of making Kodi more easily accessible for the masses on many of the more popular Linux distributions.

The Linux world is shifting slowly to packaged deployments and containers, and so, going forward, the team is looking to utilise Flatpak to hopefully give Linux users a similar, but more maintainable, “pure” Kodi application. We believe this will also allow us to provide greater access from more distributions than the PPA was ever able to.

We have a considerable amount of work to get the Flatpak builds up to the level the PPA provided (stable, nightlies, etc.), so things will develop over time. In the meantime, then, we will be looking to make this more obvious as an installation method, and update our documentation accordingly to allow users to install and use Flatpak builds more easily. You can, of course, still build from source if you’d prefer (just as people do on many other distros); whatever route you choose, we’d appreciate your feedback to help us improve the process, document the steps, and generally make things as easy as we can for our users.

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