XBMC for Mac forked for a separate project called PLEX (formarly known as "OSXBMC")

[zAo_OSX]

Quote from Elans blog:

May 21st, 2008 | Category: Coding | Author: elan
A few days ago, there was a heated internal email discussion going on amongst the XBMC team members. The topic: whether or not to kick me and the other OS X people off the team. There was an actual vote taking place, with retractions, explanations, concessions. One of the OS X people got called a rather offensive name.

I watched this all with a calm sense of detachment. Why? Because I’m totally over it.

When I started porting XBMC to OS X, and then joined up with our little ragtag team of like-minded individuals, the goals were simple: To take what we considered to be the best media center in existence, and make it run on the Mac. The second goal was to make it stable. The third goal was to integrate it fully into the Mac ecosystem. And the fourth goal was to make it even better than it already was.

What became clear to me watching this vote is that these goals can no longer be met as members of Team XBMC. That’s why I voted in favor of kicking us all off the team. I simply do not have the stamina, patience, or desire, to deal with all the drama surrounding our union. I will not go into details here, for the sake of professionalism, and it must be said that I still have a great deal of respect for nearly all of the XBMC team.

Having covered that, where to from here?

We will continue to work on XBMC for the Mac. We are forking the code (it will be hosted on Github). We will still keep roughly in sync with the Linux code, and of course the XBMC team is welcome to merge our changes back into their tree.

The biggest change here is that we will no longer be operating under the restrictions imposed by the team. We can clean up and simplify the settings as we see fit. We can remove features that don’t work right (sometimes, less is more). We can add whatever new features our users are asking for, in the manner of our choosing.

We will be announcing new support forums shortly, and we will be posting details on the Github repository.

Also, we’re definitely looking for talented graphic designers with an eye for typography to work on a top-notch Mac-themed skin.

If you’d like to join us, we’d love to have you. And by “join”, I mean “work with us”. There will be no formal team, nor will there be any getting voted off the team. Think of projects like Mono, Wine, or Linux as models.

It’s an exciting time, and there is a lot more to discuss. Peace out.

Source

[t029248]

Sad to find this out, stupid that "adults" couldn't see the bigger picture and let this happen. I would like to find out the details why this happened?

I hope the OSX version stays close to the original XBMC, not drifting away too far from the other XBMC versions. At least the fork makes it possible to focus on fully integrating it with OSX without the (legacy) burden / crap for the XBOX / Linux / Windows versions.

For now it's already the Best Media Center for OSX, by far!

[jeremymc7]

Not sure how I feel about this myself. More details would be helpful, but then it's not my place either.

That said I would prefer it stay as close to all the other versions as possiable for consistancy sake. Obviously there are certain things that need to be tailered to each version though.

Perhaps this will allow a speedier development and better performance with specific Mac tweaking. I just don't want this to too far off course. The last thing I want to see is an official mac version and an unoffical Mac version. It's a waste of resources and creates confusion in the market place.

Just my two cents for what it's worth.

[iordonez]

For you guys much won't change, you will have two choices Team XBMC's OS X release and our release. Our focus will be strictly on mac related functionalities. Source will be available to the XBMC team so you should see some of our features make it into XBMC for OS X and visa versa. All in all it's like your parents separating, they may not be able to live together but they still love you very very much.

[jeremymc7]

So if the advantage for the OSXBMC group is that they don't have to be tied to the XBMC requirements and can make more specific Mac performance improvements and likely push out updates sooner.

Then whats the advantage for the Team XBMC group and their version?

I'm sure the two versions will be different. But how much, and why? The Team XBMC version sound to be more cut and dry across platforms. Whats the advantage to use their version?

[elupus]

No real advantage for us .
Reason for the split came from that the osx guys were unable to follow the guidlines for development that we had set up. And that one of the guys on ther team managed to alienate most of our developers.

[adrianc1982]

Originally Posted by iordonez

For you guys much won't change, you will have two choices Team XBMC's OS X release and our release. Our focus will be strictly on mac related functionalities. Source will be available to the XBMC team so you should see some of our features make it into XBMC for OS X and visa versa. All in all it's like your parents separating, they may not be able to live together but they still love you very very much.

Will we continue to be XBMC or are we going to convert into something else?

[superpea]

Elupus, I don't know if attempting to clarify this is going to benefit anyone, but for the record I just wanted to respond to your comment:
"Reason for the split came from that the osx guys were unable to follow the guidlines for development that we had set up."

I would like to make it clear for the folks who are following this that the catalyst for forking the code is stated in Elan's post here: http://www.osxbmc.com/2008/05/21/exodus/

A key fact here is that TeamXBMC voted to kick the OS X folks off the dev team. They cut my access and another member's access to the TeamXBMC forums / IRC rooms without notification or warning. There was simply no other way to work on the project. The fork enables the OS X folks to continue to work together to do what we have been doing--delivering an awesome XBMC experience on OS X.

One of the benefits of the fork will be to put this bad blood and bickering behind us so we can all get back to work and focus on the awesome platform that the XBMC team has built over the years. I am sure we will both be improving it to each other's (and the USERS!) benefit.

Let's move on.

-superpea

[elupus]

Sooo.. Let's clearify again then..
The reason for why the vote was posted in the first place was what I posted above. Also the vote ended in that they should not be kicked of.

[iordonez]

Originally Posted by adrianc1982

Will we continue to be XBMC or are we going to convert into something else?

Keep an eye on Elan's blog for more info on that. I really don't want to get into much now, we all agree it's a complete waste of both teams time to argue and will help no one. I will stick around here for a while still providing help until we have our own forums, etc. setup then I'll start phasing out.