As I shortly mentioned yesterday in LibreELEC post, Kodi has now lost its only Android developer earlier this year due to some disagreements, and the project is now (mostly) maintained in Kodi forks such as SPMC or MrMC. The situation is not yet critical, but if Android developers are not found soon, there may not be an Android version in the future, as mentioned on the latest blog post on Kodi.tv.
Here’s the excerpt of that developer post specific to Android:
A Call for Android Devs (and Windows and iOS)
As many of you know, we are a bit shorthanded in the Android development department. While there are actually two projects SPMC and MrMC that have Android devs committing code, the upstream project Kodi has no one at the moment. If you are familiar with C++ and Android development (particularly recent Android TV development) and would like to help, feel free to speak up in our forums. The devs of SPMC and MrMC are very nice people and would likely be happy to mentor you. In addition, much of the early work you’d need to do would be to simply port the work done on SPMC and MrMC into Kodi, so the learning curve shouldn’t be as steep it otherwise might be.
And we can’t stress this enough, if we don’t get an Android dev soon, Kodi for Android could very well die out. This is a significant future problem.
Bold highlights are mine. Since Kodi for Android have been installed over 5 million times on Google Play, the project is definitely popular. Kodi development work is pro bono, and developers would also need to have the skills and time to get involved in the project. Having said, it would be a nice addition to any resume, so if you are interested, or know somebody who would be interested in getting involved, you may want to contact Kodi team. Kodi 17 Android is still being built, but I’ve been told it could still problematic for Amlogic TV boxes, and it’s not only a problem for Kodi 18 or beyond.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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