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Cyanogen Inc and CyanogenMod Creator Steve Kondik Part Ways (ndtv.com) 75

bulled writes: In the middle of a press release discussing the move of employees from Seattle to California, Cyanogen Inc notes that it has parted ways with Steve Kondik. It is unclear what this means for the future of CyanogenMod. NDTV reports: "Kondik took to the official CyanogenMod developer Google+ community recently where he voiced what he thought were the reasons behind Cyanogen's plight and blamed Kirt McMaster, Cyanogen's Co-Founder. 'I've been pretty quiet about the stuff that's been going on but I'm at least ready to tell the short version and hopefully get some input on what to do next because CM is very much affected,' wrote Kondik in a private Google+ community first reported by Android Police. According to Kondik's version, Cyanogen's turmoil is way far from being over. He claimed that Cyanogen had seen success thanks to the efforts by the community and the company. Though, this also changed how the company worked. Explaining how it all started to come down, Kondik wrote, 'Unfortunately once we started to see success, my co-founder apparently became unhappy with running the business and not owning the vision. This is when the 'bullet to the head' and other misguided media nonsense started, and the bad business deals were signed. Being second in command, all I could do was try and stop it, do damage control, and hope every day that something new didn't happen. The worst of it happened internally and it became a generally shitty place to work because of all the conflict. I think the backlash from those initial missteps convinced him that what we had needed to be destroyed. By the time I was able to stop it, I was outgunned and outnumbered by a team on the same mission.' Kondik also seemingly confirmed a report from July which claimed Cyanogen may pivot to apps. He further wrote, 'Eventually I tried to salvage it with a pivot that would have brought us closer to something that would have worked, but the new guys had other plans. With plenty of cash in the bank, the new guys tore the place down and will go and do whatever they are going to do. It's probably for the best and I wish them luck, but what I was trying to do, is over.'"
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Cyanogen Inc and CyanogenMod Creator Steve Kondik Part Ways

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  • by tietokone-olmi ( 26595 ) on Thursday December 01, 2016 @05:02PM (#53404477)

    Famous second-to-last words, really. Used to be "we'll pivot into mobile", back in the early aughties, and that never worked out either.

  • by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Thursday December 01, 2016 @05:12PM (#53404515)

    I knew Cyanogenmod was doomed as soon as Microsoft bought it.

    Steve Kondik needs to go back to his roots and just do better android ports for common devices again. There's still a big need for it.

    • by mlts ( 1038732 ) on Thursday December 01, 2016 @05:15PM (#53404531)

      I know for some devices, CM is the only way the device will ever see security patches and updates. I hope this doesn't mean that this project dies, just because it is so useful, especially for owners of devices that are not big hits (the HTC A9 comes to mind.)

      • by JustNiz ( 692889 )

        He needs to re-start the project under his guidance only and keep it independent. No big corporate interests involved.
        Obviously he cant call the new project Cyanogenmod anymore, partly because it isn't, and also because Microsoft or some other corporate entity owns that name now.

        • by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

          Kondikmod?

          • by Anonymous Coward

            What would you do for a Kondikmod?

        • Magentamod is the obvious choice.
          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            The color "magenta" is protected in Germany as a trademark for Deutsche Telekom. (Yes, these fuckers need to die, but the have government backing and money.)

        • by NotAPK ( 4529127 )

          He will probably find, sadly, a rash of contractual obligations prohibiting him from doing any such thing. What, you thought Microsoft paid good money [no amount available [cyngn.com]] for a ***name*** ??? Get real, their legal team would have done a total number of the entire operation. Fuck those guys.

      • Unfortunately, it's not so great at that. I have an HTC Desire (Bravo in the USA) that still works and I'd like to reuse as a SIP client. Unfortunately, it only runs CM 7.2. That would be fine if it were a patched version, but the latest nightly build was 2013 and that's so old that it doesn't contain an up-to-date certificate list or an SSL client library that supports modern versions of the TLS protocol, meaning that you can't use it for anything network connected.

        Sure, the device is pretty old, but

    • Steve Kondik needs to go back to his roots and just do better android ports for common devices again. There's still a big need for it.

      Although I'm sure you'd love him to spend his days and nights building software for free, I suspect he needs to eat and pay his electric bill.

      He needs to get with a business person that can build something around his skills. What I thought CM, Inc was supposed to be was a company that one could contract do bring up and support for your hardware, or perhaps take over support for older devices. It's not exactly exciting, but device manufacturers would fall over themselves to pay someone to take that nightmare

      • by JustNiz ( 692889 )

        ...and where did I say he needs to do it for free?

        • ...and where did I say he needs to do it for free?

          You didn't. I just observed that when he did it before it was for no pay, and you didn't (and I can't think of) anyway he's going to get paid unless it's via a proper business relationship with the device manufacturer.

      • by DrXym ( 126579 )
        Exactly. Maintaining phone firmware is an enormous drain on resources and generally a pain in the ass. Cyanogen had the capacity to streamline the process and do it cheaper and better than any in-house team and still make a profit. Instead they declared they would "destroy" Google. I bet interest in their business model virtually dried up over night after that - Google putting the screws on mobos or the mobos themselves choosing not to associate with such hubris.
    • I knew Cyanogenmod was doomed as soon as Microsoft bought it.

      Steve Kondik needs to go back to his roots and just do better android ports for common devices again. There's still a big need for it.

      I knew it was doomed when Xposed for Lollipop was released. There's not a "big" need for it, and you just end up with some amateur developers compiling it for your device without the ability to really fix any major bugs.

  • ...Extinguish (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheFakeTimCook ( 4641057 ) on Thursday December 01, 2016 @05:33PM (#53404595)
    Yep, the old formula is still working.

    Good Job, Microsoft!
    • Re:...Extinguish (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jesus_666 ( 702802 ) on Friday December 02, 2016 @03:44AM (#53406989)
      Microsoft had nothing to do with this beyond picking up the pieces. Cyanogen Inc.'s penchant for spectacularly bad business decisions (such as offering an unrestricted worldwide license to one company while simultaneously offering an exclusive license for the Indian market to another) doomed the company from the beginning. And PR moves like "We'll kill Google by releasing a product based on one of Google's products." didn't help either.

      A shame, really. Affordable handsets with known-good CM compatibility, no crapware and actual, real updates would've been a nice thing. But due to Cyanogen's leadership being farcically inept that just wasn't possible.
  • Fork it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Thursday December 01, 2016 @05:36PM (#53404607)
    It wouldn't be the first time that a community decamped from a project by forking it and picking off from a new website.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    If I had my way we could have great flagship phones and tablets running real linux with real root and normal mainline linux programs and x11, like we had with the Maemo Linux N900 for example.
    But that tool Elop cried burning platform and then burned the successful and growing Nokia Linux phones line for WinCE phones.
    Now I can get a Nexus tablet to work as well as android can but thanks to CYanogenmod without Google if I instead install the F-droid repos and sandbox any other dl'd apk apps I have to have. B

    • I still remember when I ran Linux/X11 on a Pentium with 16 MB of RAM. Paltry specs compared with a modern smartphone. Yet X11 is considered "heavy" for some reason. Feh.

    • UbuntuPhone was supposed to be that - and the dock-and-become-a-PC idea is brilliant.

      Too bad the actual product ended up being so utterly inferior to everything else on the market. Great design, horrible execution.

  • Microsoft laid its foul paws on this company, which is, as a consequence, doomed. Consider yourself middle-fingered, Microsoft.
  • by ninthbit ( 623926 ) on Friday December 02, 2016 @12:17AM (#53406511)

    For fucks sake, fork that bitch ,call it C-Mod or OpenCyan and get that bitch fixed. No one cares what the trademark branding crap.

  • Cyanogen OS isn't quite the same thing as CyanogenMod. The OS is a commercial product that manufacturers can buy for your smartphone product (e.g. OnePlus One, Wileyfox). It's a rather nice Android offering, but Cyanogen Inc borked it.. especially their relationship with OnePlus.

    As for CyanogenMod.. well, /. readers probably know what that is. Not always the most stable of offerings, but most Android devices (and even HP's WebOS ones) can run it which is a big plus. The Android world is a better place for

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