[wplug] CyanogenMod starts its own company

Justin Smith justin at adminix.net
Fri Sep 20 12:03:55 EDT 2013


I normally limit my discussion of news stories to the WPLUG Twitter 
account[1], but this story is so big that I thought the rest of you might 
want to hear about it.

Anyone who uses an Android smartphone probably knows about 
CyanogenMod, a community-developed Android distribution that can be 
installed on a variety of mobile devices. Yesterday, the CM team announced 
that it's going to start CyanogenMod Inc., a new company that will provide 
support services for CyanogenMod devices. 

As you might imagine, this means that they've got plans to develop 
Android phones that come with CyanogenMod pre-installed. Pretty neat, 
huh?

But the news isn't all good. In a Reddit "ask me anything" Q&A session, CM 
admitted that it's open to developing proprietary software. There is also a 
certain amount of "drama" going on over licensing issues. Guillaume 
Lesniak, a CM contributor, left the project because CM's leadership tried to 
strongarm him into letting CM re-license Focal, his GPL-licensed camera 
app. 

If you've got some time to spare, read over Guillaume's Google+ post[2] 
about it. It's a bit long, but it gives you a good sense for what's going on 
with CyanogenMod these days. In a lot of ways, this reminds me of how 
Canonical compromised its principles to try and advance Ubuntu.

So there's good and bad news to come out of CyanogenMod Inc., but 
nobody can deny that this is a huge announcement.

--

*Justin Smith*

"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius 
to understand the simplicity."
-Dennis Ritchie

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[1] https://twitter.com/wplug
[2] https://plus.google.com/106978520009932034644/posts/L8FJkrcahPs


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