Drama Escalates as JSergio123 Defies Team Kodi by Scraping Their API Keys

More drama has unfolded overnight in the saga of jsergio123 and the official Team Kodi over the implementation of an API key belonging to Team Kodi within jsergio123’s fork of the metahandler dependency. For those unfamiliar with metahandler, it is a dependency originally developed by Eldorado, which provides addons with title specific metadata such as artwork and synopsis.

In recent times, proper use of metahandler has required that users register at the TMDB web site in order to generate their own API key. An API key is a method of authentication which would then allow individual metahandler users to scrape metadata from TMDB. In order to limit bandwith abuse, API keys are generally limited to a specific number of API calls per hour.

The ability to retrieve metadata is a key function of the Kodi library interface. As such, TMDB has graciously issued Kodi a preferential API key that seemingly supports an unlimited number of API calls per hour. Without this unlimited API key, Kodi library users would have to register their own accounts with TMDB in order to take advantage of Kodi’s official functionality.

While many have rallied behind jsergio123 on social media, we must consider the impact of this on the greater Kodi community. It is no secret that our community has not always seen eye to eye with Team Kodi, however we have never sought to hurt them, they are the hands that feed us. Without them, none of this would be here.

The problem is that the use of Kodi’s TMDB API key within metahandler will cause a significant bandwith increase on the TMDB servers. As a result, it is more than likely that TMDB will deactivate the API key entirely in order to limit abuse of their servers. If this happens, Kodi will be left without their own working API key, and every single user will need to register their own.

Days ago, Martijn of Team Kodi warned jsergio123 against using the special API key generated for Kodi within his own development…

This whole situation appears to be jsergio123’s response to the acceptance of a fork of his Adult Swim addon being accepted into the official Kodi repository, while his contribution had been denied several days ago…

Team Kodi tweeted this in response to jsergio123’s claim that they stole his code…

While it might not have been good form for someone to submit a fork of his addon after denying his, it certainly didn’t violate the open source license. Between legal threats from the MPA, and butting heads with Team Kodi, jsergio123 seems to be under quite a bit of pressure these days.

We aren’t here to judge, but we sincerely hope that all the drama within the addon community can be put to rest, so that we can all continue to move forward together in building a stronger, more resilient Kodi development community that will continue to exist and flourish far into the future.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank Kodi, as well as TMDB for all their hard work and dedication. They are passionate volunteers who do this out of the kindness of their hearts and deserve the respect of all users and developers alike.