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Android Open Source

All Cyanogen Services Are Shutting Down (cyngn.com) 113

Long-time Slashdot reader Nemosoft Unv. writes: A very brief post on Cyanogen's blog says it all really: "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." Of course, with no focused team behind the CyanogenMod project it's effectively dead. Building an Android OS from scratch is no mean feat and most users won't be able to pull this off, let alone make fixes and updates. So what will happen next? Cyanogen had already laid off 20% of its workforce in July, and in November announced they had "separated ties" with Cyanogen founder and primary contributor Steve Kondik. One Android site quoted Kondik as saying "what I was trying to do, is over" in a private Google+ community, and the same day Kondik posted on Twitter, "Time for the next adventure." He hasn't posted since, so it's not clear what he's up to now. But the more important question is whether anyone will continue developing CyanogenMod.

UPDATE: Android Police reports that the CyanogenMod team "has posted an update of their own, confirming the shutdown of the CM infrastructure and outlining a plan to continue the open-source initiative as Lineage." The team posts on their blog that "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."
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All Cyanogen Services Are Shutting Down

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  • Well.... damn! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ichthus ( 72442 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @01:39PM (#53548755) Homepage
    One of my criteria for buying a phone was that it had CM available -- my latest being the OnePlus X. Every Android phone I've owned has run CM. This is very disappointing.
    • by MrKaos ( 858439 )

      One of my criteria for buying a phone was that it had CM available -- my latest being the OnePlus X. Every Android phone I've owned has run CM.

      Dammit, I just bought an S5 for that very same reason, a OnePlus X is a much nicer phone. The later S5 I have seems to have partitioning issues with CM, but I will keep chipping away, have you tried it with the 1+X yet?.

      I think the idea behind CM is a really good one, except that the market isn't ready. The market impetus for CM is to have more control over the device. As technologists we are probably more easily frustrated by this as we are supposed to be ahead of developments. However I think more people

      • I bought a ZTE Axon 7 when reading that ZTE was actively working with Cyanogen Inc to get the device on the supported list.

        Maybe it will roll over into LineageOS (where Cyanogenmod's corpse is being reanimated)?

        Sam

        • by MrKaos ( 858439 )

          I bought a ZTE Axon 7 when reading that ZTE was actively working with Cyanogen Inc to get the device on the supported list.

          Maybe it will roll over into LineageOS (where Cyanogenmod's corpse is being reanimated)?

          Sam

          I'm on the learning curve. I would like to see how many phones I can do, so if lineageOS is where the CM community is going, I will go there. If not, it might be time to look at an ubuntu phone.

    • by CRC'99 ( 96526 )

      One of my criteria for buying a phone was that it had CM available -- my latest being the OnePlus X. Every Android phone I've owned has run CM. This is very disappointing.

      Check OmniROM - https://omnirom.org/ [omnirom.org]

      It forked from CM quite a while ago - and it'd be swell if the active CM crowd just continued there.....

      • I used OmniROM during the KitKat era, and it felt like an extremely solid and fast ROM. I think they were closer to the stock Android even than Cyanogenmod. The only problem with OmniROM has always been a very poor device support. If you have a Nexus phone, then you're set. But it's pretty spotty/poor outside of Nexus devices.

        • by CRC'99 ( 96526 )

          I used OmniROM during the KitKat era, and it felt like an extremely solid and fast ROM. I think they were closer to the stock Android even than Cyanogenmod. The only problem with OmniROM has always been a very poor device support. If you have a Nexus phone, then you're set. But it's pretty spotty/poor outside of Nexus devices.

          Yup - hence the best thing they could get is more support / contributions / patches.

  • Damn, I've been using CM nightlies on my phone for the last year. Now what am I supposed to do? I was actually going to spend my day redoing my phone with 14 so I could get Android 7.

    What's a good alternative OS, given that I can not go back to stock? (No, really, there's a lock so I can't reflash the stock OS)

  • LibreOffice (Score:2, Informative)

    by mentil ( 1748130 )

    Remember LibreOffice? Someone will pick this up and keep developing it.

    • Re: LibreOffice (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      that was more of a fork but i agree this is popular enough that some one will continue it im sure.

      • That's typical when the original trademark/brand is still with the original license-holder. Forking with a new name allows the work to continue without a legal fight.
      • They've already announced a fork of the project. It's called Lineage OS:

        Tagline "Yes, this is us. We aren't going anywhere."
        http://lineageos.org/ [lineageos.org]

    • by Desler ( 1608317 )

      Yeah, that's exactly what the last part of the submission already says. Way to be insightful there, brah.

  • by Athanasius ( 306480 ) <slashdot AT miggy DOT org> on Saturday December 24, 2016 @01:57PM (#53548861) Homepage

    We will take pride in our Lineage [github.com] as we move forward and continue to build on its legacy.

    So not 100% dead, just not using the CyanogenMod brand any more because it's become tainted.

    • by unrtst ( 777550 )

      This is a double blessing then. I could never wrap my brain around the name cyanogenmod, could never remember it, had few friends that ever even heard of it, etc. People would just say (incorrectly), "root your phone", rather than something like, "install cyanogenmod or another alternative OS". LineageOS sounds like a great name.

    • So not 100% dead

      Just pinin' for the fjords.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Github says, "This organization has no public members. You must be a member to see who’s a part of this organization." Are there any serious efforts to pick this up by the open source community?

  • Not quite (Score:5, Interesting)

    by klingens ( 147173 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @01:57PM (#53548863)

    Cyanogen Inc. the company is dead and bankrupt. Good riddance. This has of course repercussions for the community project cyanogenmod as well. Especially for the name "cyanogen" itself, which belongs to the company but also infrastructure like servers which were used by the community project.
    But the people behind cyanogenmod, the ones doing the actual work for many phones, not the guys who wanted to simply sell that work, will continue:

    A quote from a blog entry at https://www.cyanogenmod.org/bl... [cyanogenmod.org]
    "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."

    So the name cyanogen/cyanogenmod is dead, the project itself is hopefully not.

    • Re:Not quite (Score:5, Insightful)

      by queazocotal ( 915608 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @02:03PM (#53548895)

      Of course, the problem here is that development of huge massive codebases involve needing people to work on the boring stuff.
      If this doesn't happen, then no, the code doesn't immediately break.
      But over time, it gets harder and harder for the average developer to build.
      And at some point, you have a couple of die-hards working on it, at which point it may as well be dead.
      I

      • CM people did the hard stuff before Cyanogen Inc. came along, there is reasonable hope they will do it after Cyanogen Inc. is gone as well.
        CM isn't even the only group doing custom Android Firmwares, just the biggest.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        And we have absolutely 0 examples of a successful 'huge complicated project to develop an end-user, server, embedded OS with complete User Interface, tools etc. that runs on x86, x64, ARM & probably 10 other processors'....

        Wow, you're on /. you'd think you'd have some clue about the state of OpenSource software...but just in case I suggest you google Linux as a start.

        • Android is very, very different to mainstream linux.
          The presence of much greater platform diversity, and massive revisions dropped from above with no warning or care about your fixes is a massive problem.

          The number of people working on linux distributions is also far more than those working on android ones.

          • The number of people working on linux distributions is also far more than those working on android ones.

            Plus many of them are paid. Look at the kernel change logs - or those for many of the popular packages people usually install with Linux - and start counting the mentions of Red Hat (or other corporate) employees.

            People get tired of working on the boring stuff, but that's often what's necessary to keep a project moving forward. For volunteers, there's often little motivation to work on things which don't hold some intellectual interest for them.

            • And the kernel is also used by Android

            • People get tired of working on the boring stuff, but that's often what's necessary to keep a project moving forward. For volunteers, there's often little motivation to work on things which don't hold some intellectual interest for them.

              I would like to point out that a lot of the 'boring stuff' is interoperability with other crappy systems, which wouldn't be necessary with a little care and thought.

          • and massive revisions dropped from above with no warning or care about your fixes is a massive problem.

            Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me of yet another reason I hate Google (and if anyone is thinking about modding me down, first consider whether you enjoy it when people/companies do that to you).

        • We do have another example of an end user phone, embedded OS that probably runs on x86, ARM and MIPS, it was Firefox OS and it dropped dead like a flying brick.

          I wonder if the same will happen, or maybe the list of compatible hardware will be even more and more restricted till a handful of Samsung and Nexus are left standing, and slowly dying.

  • by drewsup ( 990717 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @03:00PM (#53549151)

    Once MS got involved, it was going to be game over, man.
    I'm hoping Sailfish continues to evolve....

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Obama is still the president for another month, so this is his fault. :-p

    • by hackus ( 159037 )

      You are mistaken.

      The Russians did it.

      • by grcumb ( 781340 )

        You are mistaken.

        The Russians did it.

        Wait—Obama is Russian?

        Wait—Russians are MUSLIM?!?

        Suddenly, it all make sense!!!

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Russians were actually all born in Kenya

  • by TheFakeTimCook ( 4641057 ) on Saturday December 24, 2016 @07:34PM (#53550033)
    Now if only there was a Mobile Platform that has a longstanding history of providing Updates for reasonable periods of time...

    Oh, wait...
  • It's Christmas, so take that Christmas chill pill and relax. There will always be free ROMs as long as Google doesn't shut off AOSP completely. And unlike the article says, you don't need an Android system most people can build from scratch: what you do need is Android free as it is today, OEMs providing open drivers or at least driver packages that can be bundle with custom ROMs, and the dedicated developers on XDA that will have your back because they love what they do and they have the time. I know how s

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