The team behind the hugely-popular Kodi media software has moved on to the next version of the media player. They announced the code-name for the next version recently. However, we don’t know many other details about Kodi 19 Matrix because it’s still very early in the development process.
From Kodi 18 Leia to Kodi 19 Matrix
The previous version of the media player software was version 18 Leia. The Kodi team published a post about the naming process for the next version
To choose the code-name of version 19, the Kodi team first compiled a list of the top 10 suggested names from Twitter, Facebook and the community thread. The name had to start with M, given that L was the previous version. Here are the nine other suggestions besides Matrix:
- Mars
- Magneto
- Marvin
- Marvel
- Megatron
- Morpheus
- Merlin
- Mordor
- Metropolis
The Kodi team pointed out that all of the names except Mars were from the world of science fiction.
How version 19 got its name
After putting together the list of suggested names from users and fans of the software, the Kodi team debated using the most popular suggestion or other possible ways to finalize the code-name. They considered allowing team members to vote on the name or possibly even suggest a totally different name like “Muppet.” This time, instead of choosing the top suggestion, they allowed team members to vote on the suggestions.
Kodi 19 Matrix ended up being the favorite selection of team members. However, the debate didn’t stop there.
“And then all hell broke loose,” the team wrote in their blog post about the naming process. “Some team members argued we should be less predictable and geeky, that we could use some out-of-the-box thinking, choose something completely different, etc. What ensued was truly horrific. Geeks cursed each other, pizza boxes got thrown, beer was spilled, perfectly-formatted CSS insults flew, moms’ basements destroyed all over the world.”
Even after taking a team vote, they couldn’t decide on a name. However, they ended up going with Kodi 19 Matrix because it was among the top-suggested names by users and the favorite pick of the team members.
“In the end, geekiness has won!” they declared.
What to expect in version 19
At this point it’s far too early to speculate about Kodi 19 Matrix. The new code-name was announced only two days after version 18.2 Leia was released, so the team wasted no time moving to the next version. However, their work on version 18 is apparently not entirely complete because they are planning to push out version 18.3 at some point after they have a list of all the bug fixes which are needed in version 18.2.
We don’t expect to see Kodi 19 Matrix until some time next year, so stay tuned for updates on features expected in the next version. The final release candidate for version 18 was just released in January two weeks before the final version, so it could be quite some time before we know anything concrete about version 19.
For now, you can compare the changes from the two versions of Leia via GitHub.
