[docwra]

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style...27331.html

“This seems like another attack against the addons that made Kodi popular in the first place,” wrote TVAddons. “As abusive lawsuits have began to plague the unofficial Kodi community, we’ve noticed an alarming trend in official Kodi developers attacking the unofficial addon community, within the official Kodi forums as well as over social media. 
“Many of these attacks are unwarranted considering the fact that once upon a time Kodi itself was home to many of the addons which they now claim to hate.”
It added: “We strongly believe that end users should always have the right to choose, otherwise what’s the point?”

Its more than that though... The "spyware" Add-on in question, blocked legitimate 3rd party repositories and thousands of non-piracy related Add-ons. My independent repository, that has never hosted a piracy Add-on, included.
Utter stupidity, poor sledge hammer approach that goes against everything Open-Source software is about. I.E. Building on each others work.
The team should concentrate on educating users (though code or warnings, if needed). To stop these ridiculous attempts at controlling or abusing the ecosystem popping up.
Improvements also need to be made to the Add-on rules (so that more people are able to submit to the official repo) and the Add-on submission process (to lower the difficulty of actually getting them on the official repo).
Bring those 2 things together and people won't need to use other Repo's in the first place, and a clear line can be drawn.

EDIT: had some other ideas:

- Verified Kodi badge for non-piracy Add-ons
- List of independent repo's that do not include piracy Add-ons but are seperate from the XBMC ogranization
- Code of conduct for Add-on developers
- Some kind of warning when Kodi launches that it has 3rd party repo's installed and who they are