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.
Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at
http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/