Pierluigi Paganini
December 26, 2016
Bad news for users of the most popular custom Android ROM, the Cyanogen OS, that is now closing its services.
Cyanogen was launched with the intent to provide an improved version of the Google Android operating system but following some technical and potential legal issues, it decided to shut down its custom services.
CyanogenMod OS is not a commercial operating system that implements features not available in the official firmware distributed by mobile device vendors.
It is managed by a community of developers led by Steve Kondik, which is one of the co-founder of Cyanogen.
“As part of the ongoing consolidation of Cyanogen, all services and Cyanogen-supported nightly builds will be discontinued no later than 12/31/16. The open source project and source code will remain available for anyone who wants to build CyanogenMod personally.” reads an official statement published on the official website.
The planned shutdown of Cyanogen was officially announced late Friday through a very brief blog post made by the company, saying “as part of the ongoing consolidation of Cyanogen,” it’s shutting down all services and nightly builds on December 31.
What does it mean for end-users?
Starting from January 2017, there will be no more Android ROM updates, anyway, the open source project and source code will remain available for those people that want to build their own CyanogenMod.
Cyanogen will stop providing nightly builds and security updates for its OS, mobile devices running Cyanogen OS (i.e. OnePlus One), will have to switch to the open-source version of the CyanogenMod OS.
At the time I was writing the www.cyanogenmod.org is down.
The CyanogenMod team has published a post to confirm the shutdown of the CM infrastructure and revealing a plan to continue the open-source initiative as Lineage.
Below the full message from the team:
“Last week, we released the final CM-13.0 releases, updated to the latest security patches, in anticipation of what follows.
Yesterday, Cyanogen Inc (Cyngn) announced that they were shutting down the infrastructure behind CyanogenMod (CM). This is an action that was not unpredictable given the public departure of Kondik (cyanogen himself) from the company, and with him our last remaining advocate inside Cyngn’s leadership.
In addition to infrastructure being retired, we in the CM community have lost our voice in the future direction of CM – the brand could be sold to a third party entity as it was an asset that Kondik risked to start his business and dream. Even if we were to regroup and rebuild our own infrastructure, continuing development of CM would mean to operate with the threat of sale of the brand looming over our heads. Then there is the stigma that has grown to be attached to anything named ‘Cyanogen’. Many of you reading this have been champions of clarifying that the CM product and CyngnOS were distinct, yet the stain of many PR actions from Cyngn is a hard one to remove from CM. Given CM’s reliance on Cyngn for monetary support and the shared source base, it’s not hard to understand why the confusion remains.
It will come as no surprise that this most recent action from Cyngn is definitely a death blow for CyanogenMod.
However, CM has always been more than the name and more than the infrastructure. CM has been a success based on the spirit, ingenuity and effort of its individual contributors – back when it was Kondik in his home, to the now thousands of contributors past and present.
Embracing that spirit, we the community of developers, designers, device maintainers and translators have taken the steps necessary to produce a fork of the CM source code and pending patches. This is more than just a ‘rebrand’. This fork will return to the grassroots community effort that used to define CM while maintaining the professional quality and reliability you have come to expect more recently.
CM has served the community well over its 8 long years. It has been our home, bringing together friends from all over the world to celebrate our joy of building and giving. Its apt then that on this Eve of a holiday we pay our respects. We will take pride in our Lineage as we move forward and continue to build on its legacy.
Thank you & Goodbye,
The CyanogenMod Team”
The CyanogenMod community is now working to produce a fork of the CyanogenMod source code and pending patches.
Android community believes that a new project, dubbed LineageOS, will bo continue to live on it, but it is still in its infancy.
According to the CyanogenMod (CM) team, Lineage “is more than just a ‘rebrand’” and “will return to the grassroots community effort that used to define CM while maintaining the professional quality and reliability you have come to expect more recently.”
If you are interested in LineageOS you can give a look at its website, the files of the Lineage Android Distribution can be found on a repository on GitHub.
“So, yes, this is us. LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was. To quote Andy Rubin, this is the definition of open. A company pulling their support out of an open source project does not mean it has to die.” states the description about
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(Security Affairs – Cyanogen , dual-hat arrangement)
