XBMC on Android != XBMC for Android

The XBMC media center front-end runs on a wide variety of platforms—most recently Android, as we saw in January. But as the project discovered recently, not everything advertised to the public as "XBMC" is its work. Those who follow the project closely are unlikely to be confused, but the wider marketplace is another matter. Moreover, XBMC developers have had to spend their time and energy on the clarifications, which is quite understandably a source of frustration.

At issue is a spin-off of XBMC which calls itself "XBMC for Android." Shortly after the first releases of the official port of XBMC to the Android platform, the spin-off project announced its own release, which it tagged "the first end user friendly release of XBMC for Android" in a blog post that makes no mention of the fact that it is not the work of the official XBMC project. That blog announcement was picked up by a number of online news sources, including the popular consumer electronics blog Engadget. XBMC contacted all of the sites running the story, and all of them corrected their copy to note that XBMC for Android is not affiliated with the official XBMC project.

Then in May, the cycle repeated itself. The XBMC project released its latest update, version 12.2, on May 3, and on May 4 the XBMC for Android project announced its release, which was again picked up by Engadget, who again had to alter the story after an email from the genuine XBMC project. That prompted XBMC's Nate Thomas to post a story on the official XBMC blog titled "This Site is the Only Official Source of XBMC Software." Initially Thomas was upset that Engadget had not corrected the second story, although it did so later (which Thomas noted in the post).

But the bigger issue remains that a fork of the official project exists which has chosen to brand itself with a name confusingly similar to that of the upstream project. A commercial entity with a registered trademark to protect might well pursue legal action in such a situation, but the best approach for a GPL-licensed software project is considerably less clear. XBMC does not have sales to protect, of course, and in fact the project is expressly open to working with commercial XBMC derivatives (at the moment, Plex and Voddler; formerly Boxee as well). But it does undertake the costs of supporting users, a task which is greatly complicated when the user had unknowingly installed a modified version of the software.

What's in a (my) name?

How a project's name can be used by other parties is a tricky affair, and it is not as well-understood in free software circles as is copyright. As Karen Sandler explained in her SCALE 8x talk about trademarks, a project does not have to register a trademark (at least in the United States) in order to protect it. Rather, a trademark carries weight based on how well it establishes a brand in the minds of actual users. XBMC does not advertise a trademark on the name XBMC, nor does it have an explicit trademark-usage policy, but if it did feel that its brand was being exploited, it would still be able to make that case before a court. And it might have the structure in place to do so—which not every project would. In January 2009, the project formed the XBMC Foundation to handle donations and sponsorships, and it is represented by the Software Freedom Law Center.

However, as Sandler also discussed in her talk, there is such a thing as the acceptable "nominative use" of someone else's trademark: it is a protected use of another party's trademark to refer factually to the trademarked product. That is why Ford cannot stop Chevrolet from mentioning it in its own TV commercials. So advertising "Foo for Android" would probably not be considered a violation of the Android trademark by a court, if it is clear that the "for Android" part was a factual reference to the platform and not part of the product's name.

That particular parsing exercise is not quite as clear for XBMC for Android, however. The spin-off project does include a disclaimer on its About page, reading "XBMCANDROID.COM is not connected to or in any other way affiliated with XBMC, Team XBMC, or the XBMC Foundation." That is a plus; seemingly an addition made to the page since January. But it does not go very far; the same page states:

That wording suggests some sort of collaborative relationship between the two projects. Perhaps more to the point, the announcements picked up by Engadget and other online news sources are a lot less clear about a distinction between XBMC for Android and the official XBMC release; for example they go back and forth between referring to the download as "XBMC for Android" and "XBMC." A comment on the official XBMC blog post claiming to be from an XBMC for Android team member says a disclaimer was also included in the press release sent to Engadget, although it does not appear in the blog announcement.

A little less ambiguation

Assuming there is no intent to confuse, however, the spin-off project could still stand to do a lot more clarification. The links and other site content are as inconsistent about the name of the software as were the announcements. The site sports the official XBMC logo at the top of the page (and the Android logo) as well. But ultimately the most confusing part of the spin-off project is that fact that it has not selected a unique name for itself. It clearly could have, just as its team members clearly could have chosen to work on their own branch within the official XBMC project.

Historically, name collisions are a pretty rare event in open source software; the major ones can probably be counted on one hand. But the reason is not that open source projects fiercely protect trademarks (much less unregistered ones). Instead, it is the simple practical matter of minimizing confusion. Name collisions make packaging and distribution harder, and when they occur the bigger and better-known project generally has such an advantage that the fork is eventually forced by circumstance to rename itself.

For the time being, XBMC seems content to deal with this particular situation as a public relations matter. As the larger, more well-established project, the odds are good that events will resolve in its favor. But the issue will not disappear entirely; even within the comments on the XBMC blog post, there is a message from yet another XBMC fork, which calls itself "XBMC Android TV." Sadly, it probably would not hurt to double check the next announcement you see about XBMC—if it does not originate directly from xbmc.org.