I’ve talked about the possibility of Sam’s Video Browser going open source to join the Open Media Library project, and last week the first step was taken with Sam open sourcing his Video/DVD Library application.

The Video Browser project is now up on Google Code, and other developers are already working on the project.  Jas Manghera has started cleaning up the UI along with streamlining design to match that of Media Center.

I’m very happy to see all the open source work going on in the Media Center community lately.  One of the big issues with Media Center development has been a lack of interest and/or time available by developers, and thus several great projects have fallen off the map.  By providing the source, this issue is almost non-existent and I think it will help drive the community as well as give new developers good starting points with great source code to learn MCML from.

Back to Video Browser and Open Media Library, I think both of these plug-ins should target different markets.  Open Media Library should focus on the higher end, feature packed (eg. My Movies) side of things, and Video Browser should stay lightweight and provide just basic library functionality.