The XBMC Foundation
The XBMC Foundation was established as a non-profit entity on January 16, 2009. Since then we haven’t really released much information about the Foundation. We know this is something that comes up occasionally in the forums and there is a great deal of misleading information being passed around, so let me try and tackle a few of the more common questions.
Why do we need the Foundation?
The Foundation has been incorporated as a membership-based, not-for-profit, US based organization in order to ensure that the XBMC project continues to exist beyond the participation of individual volunteers. The reason for its existence is to promote XBMC and open-source software in general, ensure the vision of the XBMC Team as a whole remains in place, and allow us to collect donations, sponsorship and funding from a variety of sources in a safe and legal manner. It also ensures that the XBMC project remains independent of any commercial ventures that may make use of the codebase.
Essentially the foundation gives certainty moving forward and provides a legal entity with which donations can be accepted so that individuals don’t have to handle donation monies.
Who is a member of the Foundation?
Individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to the project, through sustained participation and contributions will be eligible to join the Team. An individual becomes part of the Team after nomination and approval by a majority of the existing Team members.
Any XBMC Team member that has been with the project actively for 6 months, will automatically become a member of the Foundation and gain voting rights. It should be noted that the Foundation has no influence over individual Team members, other than possibly making recommendations of what does and doesn’t fit the overall vision for XBMC.
Who is in charge of the Foundation?
The Foundation is run by a board of bi-annually elected members. The current board consists of: Jonathan Marshall (jmarshall) – President, Arne Morten Kvarving (spiff), Joakim Plate (elupus), Yuval Tal (yuvalt), and Staffan Lindberg (pike). In addition there are two officers: Sean Soria (malloc) as Treasurer and Cory Fields (theuni) as Business Relations Manager.
Why do we need corporate sponsors and what benefit do we get out of it?
We benefit from sponsors in three ways: funding, support and publicity. All of which bring great benefits to the project and community as a whole. For example, not only do sponsors give financial funding, but more often than not they also help identify and fix bugs and contribute code to back into XBMC.
It is in their best interests to work with us; if they are using XBMC as part of their business, they need issues fixed and in turn much of the code used to fix their issue is returned into core XBMC. Likewise for new features, if they develop something and XBMC feel that it is appropriate for inclusion that development will make it into core XBMC, assuming it fits in with our overall vision and standards. Certainly, being a sponsor does not imply that your code makes it into XBMC.
What happens to corporate sponsorship money / users donations?
A great many things, but fundamentally whatever is in the best interest of the project. A significant sum of money has been paid in legal fees recently for incorporating the XBMC Foundation. Additionally, things like the annual DevCon and XBMC attending trade-shows would not be possible without this funding – XBMC developers are located all over the world, and so the vast majority of donations and sponsorship goes to air travel. Purchasing of hardware is also an area that is often overlooked. When users want support for the latest and greatest hardware or feature, sometimes this can be developed without access to the hardware. More often than not though, it is much quicker if the Devs have access to this hardware and if needed the Foundation can help them to attain it. In cases like this, the hardware is only on loan to the Dev’s and ownership is retained by the foundation.
Why is XBMC selling out?
We are not. The Foundation was established as a safeguard for the open-source project, in order to facilitate a means of collecting and distributing donations as needed, and to provide oversight when issues arise. These things would be impossible to orchestrate without a governing body. Almost all large open-source projects have a similar body.
Who is getting rich out of this?
Contrary to what some may think, we are not making millions from this, and no one is sitting around surrounded by piles of awesome hardware. Our budget is small and noone receives a salary. This is a community project and we all devote our time for free because we enjoy doing so. There is no financial motive to be part of XBMC. If anything it’s the users of XBMC that are getting rich out of this – you get XBMC and all of the support you need for free! Fortunately, every member of Team XBMC is ALSO an XBMC user, and so we benefit from the program itself just as much as everyone else.
There have been a few cases where companies have hired XBMC developers on a contractual basis to help with the integration of their product. This type of work is encouraged, as it is essentially sponsored development of XBMC. We welcome any company who is willing to sponsor development in a way that complies (both in letter and in spirit) with the GPL. After all, the best thing that could happen for the project would be to have the developers working full-time on it!
Where can I find out more about the Foundation?
Admittedly there is not much information published about the Foundation. The reason is simple: the bureaucratic side of open-source is far less fun than writing code. As a result, it gets less attention than it should. We are in the process of documenting all of this and will be putting it on the site for all to see.
Conclusion
Hopefully this should help answer some of the questions about the Foundation and why it is necessary. In time we will publish more details about the Foundation and its members, however in the mean time if you have any specific questions please feel free to contact us.
Thanks for the info. You’re doing a fantastic job managing this project and it is truly appreciated.
Yup, thanks for the info. An interesting read. I can only hope you’ll be all able to get full time jobs out of this, while keeping alive the great spirit that gave birth to XBMC in the first place.
Great reading!
I never thought anything could come from you guys other than good vibes and a genuine self-righteous, ass kicking, pure genius software development.
Keep up the excellent work.
All sounds great, one question regarding the following statement:
“We welcome any company who is willing to sponsor development in a way that complies (both in letter and in spirit) with the GPL. ”
I take it this mean only code that is GPL will make it into XBMC moving forward, I don’t mind subscription fees for already paid services (Hulu Plus if you like that kind of thing), but I don’t want to see missing functionality due to licensing issues.
@macleod_1980
XBMC is and will remain free (in both senses of the word).
@theuni Cheers!
I think this is a great step for XBMC, contrary to the traditional scepticism about Open Source and ‘bureaucracy’. Only the fact that you guys take the time to communicate this to the community deserves credit.
Thank you for an awesome piece of software, and keep up the great work. I guess I’ll have to learn to work with git now to do decent checkouts, and I will pull out my wallet soon to donate to you guys – if there’s a project out there that deserves it, it’s XBMC :).
So to sum up, other then making it easier to handle donations, the XBMC Foundation main purpose for existing is to make sure both the XBMC project an its source code remain free and open source software as GPL, LGPL, or similar compatible licenses, forever and ever.
Hence making sure that no individual team member or contributers can choose to change the license of the code that they wrote for XBMC to closed source or to a proprietary license that is not compatible with GNU GPL.
So that then means that if you ever want to use closed source software or non-GPL compatible code owith XBMC then you will have use some sort of abstraction layer that only implements interactions on a level that is acceptable with the GPL, like using an API or adding exception to the GPL licentse to allow linking of proprietary modules with that GPL-covered library under a controlled interface only, and have the XBMC Foundation as the copyright holder give out authorization to use that exception to specific programs or addons?
@theuni
have a look please on http://openhd.ru/hd-players/openhd/full_hd_mediapleer_openhd_media_box_black_/
it’s commercial hardware mediacenter based on Foxconn with modified xbmc
do you know about it ?
@AAAA
That kind of thing happens often. It’s no problem as long as the source is offered. Is it?
no any info about source code, seems ther’s only binary code
@Free as in free speech, not as in free beer
Sounds like you are misunderstanding “free beer”.
The Foundation does not (currently) hold the copyright, as it does not require such a contract to be signed by team members. Most code is attributed to “Team XBMC”, which is vague, but is understood to loosely mean “the developers”. Thus, the XBMC code could not easily be relicensed in its entirety, but portions could contain exceptions at the team’s discretion. So as you mentioned, an exempted abstraction layer is a possibility, and one we’ve considered to allow for protected content playback.
Note: IANAL, just answering to the best of my ability. And echoing my understanding of what our attorneys have told us.
how is xmbc benefiting from boxee?
Boxee donates a certain amount of money to XBMC each year and was very helpful with lawyers costs in setting up the foundation. Occasionally coded is ported back and forth between the two code bases.
@Joe Wilson
XBMC developers quite often give back pieces of code, be it adding new features or helping with bug fixes. I believe they have also helped to fund a devcon or 2.
Dammit I meant Boxee developers
@Joe Wilson/Rob: The last code that Boxee contributed was the directx refactor, sometime back in 2009. We hope that Boxee will remain a regular sponsor along with the others up in the top right on the homepage.
@jmarshall
Any valid reason other than lack of resources why Boxee is not activly contributing code upstream to XBMC?
One would think that now when Boxee have become as relativly large as they are, Boxee would hire one developer whos only job it is to port code back and forth between the projects, both ways. Boxee could also have that person act as a kind communication liaison between Boxee’s and XBMC’s developers, as that person would speak the same language that is code.
Shouldn’t it be in Boxee’s interest to have their XBMC core align with upstream XBMC as much as possible?
@#8:
If “the XBMC Foundation main purpose for existing is to make sure both the XBMC project an its source code remain free and open source software as GPL”:
This is not true as the Foundation is no copyrightholder and thus the GPL and the courtesy of the copyrightholders are the only things to make sure that XBMC stays free and open source. In this respect, the Foundation offers nothing GPL already offers. This is also a misunderstanding of the concept of ownership by prae5 when he says: It also ensures that the XBMC project remains independent of any commercial ventures that may make use of the codebase. Not to mention, all forks like Boxee and i.e. Voddler.
To me, it’s strange to read a boxee representive is in the XBMC board. For more detaliled info., I’ll have to wait untill better info is posted. Of course, I am happy with this start.
Your guys are doing some awesome, groundbreaking work and I really appreciate it.
@ free-as-in-too-long-a-name-to-quote;
i think the main reason is that they have been working at porting, not implementing. also, with all respect for the boxee devs, i believe they often have to choose the get-the-damn-thing-working alternative rather than the clean code alternative. and they know trying to get code upstream (i.e. to us) would require the latter.
The foundation sounds perfect.
I can’t believe anyone has been questioning this arrangement. When I saw the questions “Why is XBMC selling?” and “Who’s getting rich off this?” I almost laughed out loud. Many big open source projects have foundations just like this; it’s a totally standard solution for handling money and the other issues this post lists. As far as I can tell, it sounds like everything has been arranged quite ideally.
Ha… One of my favorite answers from XBMC Team. I like the clarity of this answer, every time that this question appears.
Thanks guys for one more time, for this great piece of FREE software jewel.
Cheers
Nessus
I’ve been peeking at the TRAC, and I see that upcoming final magic ;-)