[RockerC]

Why is the official XBMC Remotes for Android and iOS source code not on the official GitHub repository for XBMC?

XBMC (Team XBMC) official repository on GitHub
https://github.com/xbmc/

Official XBMC Remote(s) for Android is instead on freezy's own private repository on GitHub
https://github.com/freezy/android-xbmcremote
https://github.com/freezy/android-xbmcremote-sandbox

Official XBMC Remote for iOS is instead on joethefox's own private repository on GitHub
https://github.com/joethefox/Unofficial-...BMC-Remote

Would it not be better to collect all official source code from Team XBMC in one and the same repository on GitHub?

[jschoen]

I do not know about the Android Remote but the ios one you linked is not an Official Remote. It is actually called the Unofficial Official XBMC Remote. Although I do have to say it is quite good, and I really like, it is not built by XBMC developers.

[natethomas]

I do not know about the Android Remote but the ios one you linked is not an Official Remote. It is actually called the Unofficial Official XBMC Remote. Although I do have to say it is quite good, and I really like, it is not built by XBMC developers.

That was mostly true until yesterday. The main developer was invited on to the team a while back upon agreeing to open source the software. After a team review and some internally discussed changes, it's been officially accepted by the team as "our" remote.

[natethomas]

I can't speak for the Android remote, but part of the reason we're trying to keep the iOS marginally separated from the XBMC codebase is licensing concerns. Essentially, the GPL doesn't play nice with the iOS app store. So to get around that issue, the remote is basically "GPL, except in any way that conflicts with the app store." At least at this point, keeping the base separate makes for less confusion.

[jschoen]

I do not know about the Android Remote but the ios one you linked is not an Official Remote. It is actually called the Unofficial Official XBMC Remote. Although I do have to say it is quite good, and I really like, it is not built by XBMC developers.

That was mostly true until yesterday. The main developer was invited on to the team a while back upon agreeing to open source the software. After a team review and some internally discussed changes, it's been officially accepted by the team as "our" remote.

Well I guess I do not read enough. That is good news though.

[RockerC]

I can't speak for the Android remote, but part of the reason we're trying to keep the iOS marginally separated from the XBMC codebase is licensing concerns. Essentially, the GPL doesn't play nice with the iOS app store. So to get around that issue, the remote is basically "GPL, except in any way that conflicts with the app store." At least at this point, keeping the base separate makes for less confusion.

That does not make sense as a reason for different GitHub project/repository as license is applied per source code file, not per GitHub project or even per GitHub repository/branch.

I would think that the XBMC project as a whole would look more attractive to new developers and potential sponsors / partners if all source code was collected in a single place.

You could compare this concept to the new Addon Manager verses the old way of having to browse the forum and manually download/extract files to get addons into XBMC

---

I do not know about the Android Remote but the ios one you linked is not an Official Remote. It is actually called the Unofficial Official XBMC Remote. Although I do have to say it is quite good, and I really like, it is not built by XBMC developers.

That was mostly true until yesterday. The main developer was invited on to the team a while back upon agreeing to open source the software. After a team review and some internally discussed changes, it's been officially accepted by the team as "our" remote.

Yeah I read an announcement on XBMC's Facebook page yesterday, I was thinking there would be a more public news post announcement on xbmc.org today though?

[natethomas]

I would think that the XBMC project as a whole would look more attractive to new developers and potential sponsors / partners if all source code was collected in a single place.

You could compare this concept to the new Addon Manager verses the old way of having to browse the forum and manually download/extract files to get addons into XBMC

Sure. Except the addon manager actually IS a part of XBMC. Neither remote is part of the XBMC codebase. Honestly though, I'm not much use in this discussion. The minutia of where code is located in github for the purposes of looking the most attractive to potential future developers is much less important to me than the fact that the code is in github in the first place.

[Martijn]

Not sure what the fuss is all about. There are more "official XBMC add-ons" that aren't in the XBMC git but only in team member his own repo

[Ned Scott]

Actually, the open source licensing stuff and the AppStore is highly debatable. However, since it's all original code then we avoid any issues via dual licensing. I doubt there would be any actual issue if we did have to put any open source code upstream to the iOS remote app, but that's something we'll deal with when it happens.

The real reason you don't see the code on XBMC's GitHub is because no one has done it yet. XBMC add-ons still haven't made it over to GitHub yet. Just takes time and organization, and no one is pressed to do it since in most cases only one or two people are working on the code, so it's whatever works best for them. They're smaller sub projects, so it's not as pressing for the code to be with all the other XBMC code.

At least that's what I've figured from what I've seen.

[RockerC]

Not sure what the fuss is all about. There are more "official XBMC add-ons" that aren't in the XBMC git but only in team member his own repo

Good point, would not all the "official Team-XBMC addons" as collaborate works be better served if you had those in the common GitHub repository?

I'm thinking that it is likely that other developers will be more prone to contribute to those "official Team-XBMC addons" if they're all collected there

Again same with official remote control apps and other official stuff such as skins and tools that are open source under Team-XBMC copyright

[freezy]

When moving from Google Code to Github we've discussed the question and it seemed better to keep it in my "private" repository, we can always move it to the official XBMC repository later on.