Open source Android fork Cyanogen becomes $7m company

Didn't see that coming

Might have been reported before, but I missed it.

I suppose in many - if not all important - respects, CM is mature and stable enough these days where it can be said to be truly 'out of beta' - when I've used it, it's typically been as solid (if not more so) than the OEM builds, even if it has lacked full acceleration on some hardware from a few years ago, etc.

I expect there would be free community editions and 'pro' editions, community editions having less features but still being a nice, nexus-y sort of clean build for with useful features added (governers, SMB mounting etc) with pro builds being fully fledged, fully accelerated, maxed out geekfests.

And much as though people malign the humble geek (or, for a less weildy and less arsey phrase, the actively interested technologist - what can I say, I am one as are most readers on here), if you want to sell them something that suits their needs at a price they like, there's money there - look at the funding the Ubuntu Edge got. Alright, not as much as it needed, but eight figure donations is real proof of a hardcore geek market who were happy to throw money at it. RasPi is also the same sort of thing. Right price for the featureset.

Best of luck to them, I say - they've done a sweet job of making CM a proper platform, if they can get some money out of it without messing it up, all power to 'em and I look forward to seeing what they can do.

Steven R

Also...

Any takers on a wager for how long before this overtakes WinMob and BBOS in the worldwide mobile uptake/usage stats? :D

Steven 'Ooh, burn!' R

hmm

Since a lot of ROMS are based on CM, I guess THAT burgeoning market will dry up. CM just took up ownership - they have become the establishment. I'm not putting them down, they've done a great job, just PLAY NICE!

If CM is such a great idea why would google not simply have purchased it and rolled the option out for customers if it is so popular? Real question...

To me this has fail written on it for a number of reasons, none less than you have to overwrite your device for it to work in the first place which voids your warranty in case of any software failure.

Somewhat of a comparison would be rainmeter skins on a PC, they look good at first but then you realize they are actually not that great the good news is they do not void warranty and it is much harder to "brick" your PC than your phone when you are flashing it.

The secure part made me laugh too, so wait, you want me to fully root and hack my phone, install custom software on it and then take it to my job and use it on my corporate secure network......rightttttt.......

Love It

Upgraded 2 android tablets and a phone to Cyanogenmod in the past week as the tablets had started to slow and churn after around a year of bloat. Absolutely love it.

Plus no more Samsung crapware stealing my bandwidth, disk, cpu, memory and privacy.

There were a few hairy moments on the install when I thought I'd bricked one of my devices, but all ended well.

Added bonus for the paranoid is that you can build it yourself from source code so in theory you've got full control of your device. However if you want the main google android apps (Mail, Maps, Currents, Google+ etc) you still need the google binaries (easily obtainable).

CyanogenMod & G(oogle) Apps

"Kondik said that one of Cyanogen's goals will be to obtain a license for Google Play Services,"

I don't get why Google wants them to get a license. Google should be sending the CyanogenMod crew a gold-plated GApps licence along with candy and some strippers too.

Look at it this way around. How many people are, thanks to CM, still happily pouring their usage/location/browsing data into google servers and buying from the google store rather than contemplating replacing their obsolete* android phone with an iPhone?

* which the vendor forgot about the second it was released, and the carrier can't be arsed pushing updates for, even if they do exist.

Whelp

CM WAS first out the gate as a complete and actually feasibly working alternative. I've used CM since my first Android Donut device, (G1) and still use a build of it on my (admittedly dated) SGS3 . To this day I check to see if a CM build is available for any device that I root either for myself or others before rooting them. If CM can't do it, I tend to not even try. (Exception being the original Nook, which was quite a while ago). To this day, my Motorola Xoom runs CM and runs like a champ even if it is one of the early, early, EARLY tablets.

Non-plussed

I've installed CM twice on my admittedly ancient and dusty Nexus S. Both times it was quickly removed when I ran into odd crashes and downright nasty battery life. YMMV.

Ultimately though what really gets my goat is that (aside from random curiosity) I installed it because I wanted a couple of "obvious to anyone who actually uses the damned thing" features: Lock Screen, so I don't keep randomly losing icons from my home screen; and the freedom to send a text message to a group of 44 people at one time without being harassed by Android.

And of course that bloody obvious to anyone that isn't brain dead thing: a quick and easy way to turn WIFI, BlueTooth etc on and off.

I haven't had a chance to play with KitKat yet, but I fear that Android is going the way of so many Google projects - losing features that people actually use, and adding strange restrictions that really have no place.

Who knows - maybe this will be the year of the Firefox and Ubuntu phones.....

Oh Jeez

So a creating a new mobile OS is the new bandwagon? Is the actuality that this is a bit like how there are many Linux distros but it's still the same underlying OS?

the cyan in it

inspired name choice, such an 8bit color (sic) Texas and Commodore are kicking themselves in their complex shared with the Golden Girls http://youtu.be/xnkhzBfnW8Y

Good.

Good. I'll happily pay an annual licence fee to CM touse their OS on my phone, as long as it's not spying, mining, and selling all of fucking data.

If it comes with absolutely NO Google software on whatsoever, so much the better. Sold.

If it comes with NO Facebook and Twitter, EVEN BETTER.

Even if it comes with FaceTwat and Twatsuck, as long as they're un-installable, I'm STILL sold.

Will be watching this with interest. I really hope they go to a paid subscription model. Why? Because if they give the OS away for free, then it means advertising - which means spying, mining, and selling my data on. I'd rather just pay for an OS for my phone the way I do for my PC.

Microsoft Android ©

How will this relate to the Microsoft Android (©) sales tax?

Won't connect to play store?

Hold on, are you saying that (as they don't currently have permission) you can download an app from the play store to install a custom ROM on your phone that will then be blocked from downloading anything else from the play store? Plus your phone will be out of warranty for using it?

They had better make that pretty clear when your downloading it.

(the old way of installing would make it pretty obvious your doing something that is out of warranty and isn't supported by Google, but a play store app could literately be used by anyone.

A plus point...

As it stands now, Cyanogen is not licensed to distribute Google's proprietary apps with its firmwares.

To me, this is an advantage for the most part. To be able to get an Android phone free of Google, Facebook and various other bits of stuff that occupy storage space on my phone but are never used. I guess the Play application is needed, in order that the phone can be properly customised, but that's probably all. Play and the Maps application are the only Google apps I knowingly run on my phone, pretty much everything else is third-party.

And in a similar vein: Fairphone.com

I've been watching with interest the development of Fairphone (http://www.fairphone.com/). They're actually manufacturing the hardware to put Android onto. They advertise that they're using fairly-sourced (reasonable wages for peons, no profits going to underwrite wars, ...) materials, the phone will be rootable, have two SIMs, and so forth. Only €325---cheap!

Disclaimer: I have no business or other interest in this device, other than that I lust for one, but don't live in the EU, which is their initial distribution area.

I want Cyanogenmod for my Windows phone.

I really do.