CyanogenMod is a widely used, free & open-source, mobile operating system based on Android platform, estimated to be run by over 50 million people around the world.
The importance of CM to the Android community is immense and does not end by being a popular derivative of the latter, it also serves as a fertile ground for other essential projects to flourish on, such as: Xposed and ClockworkMod for example.
Moreover, in many cases where some capabilities of Android as it’s served by Google and other manufacturers has been disabled, CM has managed to bring it back to the users through a minor modification, e.g. call recording.
What Happened?
If you’re curious to know what’s gone wrong that brought CM to the point where it is today after 8 years of apparent growing success then here’s the answer:
Cyanogen Inc (you might remember it from MODS), the commercialized branch of CyanogenMod and its main source of funding, has decided earlier this year they would start a consolidation process in order to “break free from its legacy model”.
The process proved to be a step too far apparently as Steve Kondik – the man behind Cyanogen / CyanogenMod – decided to leave the company “to forge his path as he sees fit”.
Following that move, Cyanogen has announced they intend to retire all services and Cyanogen-supported nightly builds no later than 31/12/16.
At this point, CM community which includes many developers, designers, device maintainers and translators also decided to react and make a decision of their own.
Due to the fact CyanogenMod – the brand – is an asset of Kondik which can be sold to a third party entity and also due to the PR challenge the link between CyanogenMod and Cyanogen Inc is causing, CM community has decided to drop the brand altogether and there goes CyanogenMod as we all knew and loved.
CyanogenMod’s Lineage
CyanogenMod, as a brand, may now shut down however all the developers, designers, device maintainers and translators behind it have yet to say their last word.
In order to keep the wonderful project alive CM community has decided to fork CyanogenMod and rename it as Lineage.
“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.”
The fork is currently available on GitHub and appears to be actively maintained at the moment, check it out below.
