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Ars Checks Out CyanogenMod's New Installer
Ars Technica runs through the pretty and simple (but Windows-only) installer that is one of the first big fruits of the newly commercialized CyanogenMod project, and finds it very worthwhile. However, and despite being far easier for ordinary mortals than the error-prone process of the old way to put on CyanogenMod, it's not perfect: reviewer Ron Amadeo ran into troubles using it on his Nexus 4, and cautions: "If CyanogenMod Inc. really wants to lower the barrier to entry, they next thing they need is a way for users to just as easily go back to the setup they had before installing CyanogenMod. Currently, the installer is a one-way street. If the user decides CyanogenMod isn't for them and wants to go back, they're stuck. Even worse, they could run into the situation I did, where CyanogenMod installs but everything is broken. I've done this enough that I know how to go back to stock, but for a novice, they would have been abandoned with a broken phone."
Google doesn't give you "an entire functional open source OS" either - it gives you patches to GNU/Linux to enable an already "functional open source OS" to work better on mobile devices. But it leaves out the apps which make it "entire". And denies access to the one of the most valuable features of any Linux distro - the official software repository. Oh, and there's usually a pesky binary driver problem, but perhaps we can blame device manufacturers for that.
MS meanwhile builds its own operating systems from scratch and allows you access to the source for the base OS on its own semi-useful terms, e.g. Windows Embedded Compact. Also crippled in the sense that you don't get the source for higher level stuff.
Line for line, MS is offering you access to more of its own code than Google, if you want to look at it like that. But Google is bound (luckily!) by a more open licence. On balance, they're equally crappy.