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Thank You and Goodbye, the CyanogenMod Team
- vonklaus 10y agoI have read this and another post from CM team. I somehow missed what the main catalyst was for shutting down. Is there a succinct explanation? What happened?
- lostgame 10y agoI, too, am kinda left wondering 'what happened?'
- wears_sweaters1 10y agoAs far as I know, the straw that broke the camel's back was CM inc breaking a device exclusivity contract which as one can imagine hurt revenue and anger investors. That coupled with some aggressive PR in years past lead to this.
- dispose13432 10y agoThey were the darling of custom ROMs before Cyanogen Inc. When they incorporated, a lot of people hoped it would help sponsor development (while others, suspecting what would happen, forked into OmniRom). Unfortunately, once they incorporated, the company spokesman (McMaster) went against the whole original culture (they installed bloatware on their phones) and generally spoke without thinking (kill Google, etc.). Now, they're seen as a weak wannabee Oracle.
- brianwawok 10y agoHard to make money selling a free OS to replace an OS the customer doesn't pay for already?
- greglindahl 10y agoAndroid is "free" to the consumer, but the payment is that if you want all of the Google apps (which are no longer part of the open source stuff) and the consumer uses the Google apps (likely), all of the search revenue goes to Google.
- bitmapbrother 10y agoThe numerous China Android based OS's, that are void of Google services, would disagree.
- greglindahl 10y agoExcuse me, disagree how? They don't use the special google apps, and search revenue doesn't go to google. That's consistent with what I said. Sorry that it wasn't clear.
- Andrex 10y agoGood point, but for the record none of the Google apps were ever open source - they were part of the compatibility suite from the start. They did start replacing a couple of the open source apps with Google versions, though (like the browser.)
- greglindahl 10y agoI was thinking of the browser in particular -- the open source one was abandoned a while ago, and the proprietary one has google hard-wired as the only search engine.
- hackuser 10y ago> Android is "free" to the consumer, but the payment is that if you want all of the Google apps (which are no longer part of the open source stuff) and the consumer uses the Google apps (likely), all of the search revenue goes to Google. The payment is your private information.
- 10y ago
- glkgdswdg 10y agoThey weren't targeting users, they were targeting manufacturers (pay them and they'll do the software). It actually makes sense as a business model, but they messed up by backstabbing their first customer (after contracting with OnePlus, they signed an exclusive contract with MicroMax that no other company can sell cyanogenos in India, which, had OnePlus not made OxygenOS, would have killed them.) It was probably the stupidest move they could have done, as no company would trust them again, and lost them all the goodwill they had.
- user837387 10y ago>>It was probably the stupidest move they could have done, as no company would trust them again, and lost them all the goodwill they had.<< There are plenty of people in the business world that screw so many people, businesses, banks and they still manage to continue doing business. I wish there was a name for it. Madoff is an example: even after people warned others about his business being a scam he still continued doing business until he collapsed on his own. Nobody brought him down, he did it to himself. The big lie is what they teach us as young kids, that honor actually means something. Power is might, and if you have it nothing else seems to matter, virtually always.
- aswanson 10y agoThere are a fair amount of internet companies that started off as goodwill projects, though.
- danudey 10y agoScrewing other people is possible when you are at (or near) the top of the pile. When you're at the bottom, it just gets you killed. If you screw your 100th customer, you have 99 customers who are pretty likely to write it off. If you screw your first customer, it's a warning to others.
- vacri 10y agoCrazy. Imagine if Microsoft have given a single vendor exclusive rights to sell their operating system in a major market. We wouldn't even know their name today, except as a historical curio.
- ajross 10y agoNot really. Here's what's publicly known: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyanogenMod#Restructure_and_cessation_of_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyanogenMod#Restructure_and_ce... Honestly it looks to me that they just ran out of runway and dissolved into an internal power struggle, then someone representing the investor side of things came in to shut it all down and recover what could be salvaged.
- fapjacks 10y agoThere was a post on Reddit from one of the former developers warning people to disable updates (not for regular CyanogenMod, but for the commercial devices) because the company was talking about pushing adware of some kind of the devices with an unannounced update.
- paulorcf 10y agohttps://github.com/lineageos https://github.com/lineageos and http://lineageos.org/ http://lineageos.org/ Only a fork!
- mindcrash 10y agoAs mentioned within a very well hidden easter egg in their press release: "We will take pride in our Lineage as we move forward and continue to build on its legacy."
- notatoad 10y agothere's a good summary at the top of this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/5kbnfg/cyanogen_inc_megathread/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/5kbnfg/cyanogen_in...
- Animats 10y agoThe successors need a new name. I suggest "Public Phone". The trademark is available.
- dispose13432 10y agoThey have one. It's called LineageOS.
- Animats 10y agoBlah. Sounds like another Linux distro.
- notatoad 10y agoI think the boring name is a good sign - Operating systems should be boring. Flashy marketing leads to the sort of drama that killed cyanogen.
- PakG1 10y agoThe word lineage is boring? It seems to be haughty, lofty, arrogant, and so on.
- sparrish 10y agoWhere does lineage mean that? I've never seen that definition.
- SSTitan 10y agowhen someone refers to their parentage/ancestors as their "lineage" it almost always means they are royal/upper class/landed gentry, etc... example: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/lineage-british-royal-family http://all-that-is-interesting.com/lineage-british-royal-fam...
- mejari 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bitL 10y agoAnother tech project bites dust due to clueless managerial types trying to propel their ego...
- aswanson 10y agoI saw an early interview where an early founder was saying they were going to put google out of business. Wasnt a good sign.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- CamperBob2 10y agoYeah, get in line behind Steve Ballmer.
- walrus01 10y agocyanogen (the corporation) was toast when they stabbed their first major customer, oneplus, in the back... copy and paste follows: tl;dr: Cyanogen terminated their contract with OnePlus all of a sudden to enter an exclusive agreement with another company in India, causing the phone to be banned in the country. This is widely seen as a dick move. OnePlus had a worldwide (excluding mainland China) non-exclusive right to use the Cyanogen trademarks and ship the software on their device. This agreement was in place for a time period, and said that Cyanogen wouldn’t work with other OEMs to develop or integrate the system during this time in the regions covered by the agreement. Cyanogen then went and made an agreement with Micromax that was exclusive (despite OnePlus already having non-exclusive rights to these countries), and told OnePlus they were terminating their agreement in an email simply saying they were terminating. Such a contract termination is most definitely unusual, and normally is not permitted without (significant) penalties... Micromax succeeded in their injunction request against OnePlus, preventing the import and sale of OnePlus devices, on account of their exclusivity deal. https://www.xda-developers.com/cyngn-oneplus-micromax-the-legal-battle/ https://www.xda-developers.com/cyngn-oneplus-micromax-the-le...
- 10y ago
- robk 10y agoPart of the problem is the confusing naming. I'm an Android fan and I can't tell the difference between CyanogenMod, Cyanogen OS, Cyanogen Inc and Cyngn. Terrible way to run a business and project when it's too hard to separate out what they each do by a unique name.
- oliwarner 10y agoThe conflation was deliberate. They wanted to trade on the good name of the original open project.
- hackuser 10y agoIt was nothing sinister. Cyanogen himself, Steve Kondik, was the CEO of the new company. They were 100% open about it.
- mark_edward 10y agoOnce you've made a for profit enterprise, it's fundamentally deceptive to trade on the good will of things like volunteering, charity, add open source, because the incentive structure and relationship has changed. Someone selling me a OS for profit should be trusted far less than someone who does it for free and/or as a labor of love or duty. There's a buying power that a consumer has that a user of something provided for free doesn't, but there is also a hell of a lot more reason to cheat, lie to, defraud a consumer than a user. There's an adversarial aspect to the relationship now.
- michalskop 10y agoAs a potentional user (having a FF OS mobile, for example) I never even learnt the name and I do not even know how to pronunce it correctly till today - seriously, the name was probably the most important reason why I do not have a mobile with the CM system on it, because it is hard to search for something you do not remember, to talk about it, etc. (I am not an English native speaker, not living in an English-speaking country.)
- asdz 10y agoI'm a user of CM for many years. I don't know any person's name in CM team, but I wish everyone who's behind the curtain have a good future and thanks for all your contribution.
- savad 10y agoits sad to see the death of Cyanogen.... :(