Chris Browet, the creator of SPMC, a popular forked version of Kodi, has announced that he is joining the team behind MrMC, another popular forked version of Kodi. As a result, development of SPMC is coming to an end so that Browet, also commonly known by the handle koying, can concentrate on his new role of maintaining MrMC’s development for Android and Fire OS devices.

MrMC and SPMC are easily among the most popular forked versions of Kodi, a media center app that is used by many Fire TV owners. MrMC was created by former Kodi developers Scott Davilla (a.k.a davilla) and Željko Ametovic (a.k.a. amet). They were the two who originally ported Kodi, then called XBMC, to the Android platform. When Davilla and Ametovic left the Kodi team, Browet stepped up to handle much of Kodi’s Android development.

The Kodi team has had trouble attracting new Android developers in the past. They’ve relied heavily on advancements made by both MrMC and SPMC, which are both open source apps that have taken Kodi’s original code to new levels on mobile platforms like Android, Fire OS, and iOS. The merger of MrMC and SPMC is great news because it puts the top Android media center developers under one roof to work on the same app.

Fans of SPMC will certainly be sad to see the app’s development come to an end, but there is a free version of MrMC called MrMC Lite for those who do not want to pay $2.99 for the full version. Of course, there is also the option to switch to Kodi, which will undoubtedly continue to benefit from Davilla, Ametovic, and Browet’s development at MrMC by integrating their open source code into Kodi.

The MrMC team has also informed me that they’ll be introducing Python support into their app in conjunction with Browet’s arrival on the team. MrMC notably removed support for Python from its original Kodi base code because Python was unnecessary since the app does not support 3rd-party add-ons. Once support for Python is added in a future release, MrMC will continue to not allow user-installed add-ons in order to remain in the Amazon and Apple appstores. MrMC will, however, be adding highly requested Python-based add-ons to MrMC, starting with the Plex add-on and some more powerful skins that require Python helpers.

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