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Cyanogen Gets a New CEO, Shifts Away From Selling a Full Mobile Operating System (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Cyanogen, a startup behind its own, alternative version of the Android operating system, now has a new CEO. In the wake of reports that the company exaggerated its success in terms of active users, layoffs, and difficulties scaling, Cyanogen's co-founder and CEO Kirt McMaster will be transitioning into an "Executive Chairman" role, while Lior Tal, previously COO, will now assume the CEO position. In addition, Steve Kondik, Cyanogen's co-founder and CTO, will be taking on a new role as Chief Science Officer, the company announced. He will report Stephen Lawler, the company's SVP of Engineering. Today's blog post from new CEO Tal also somewhat acknowledged the company's struggles, and announced plans to shift in its business model with the launch of a new Cyanogen Modular OS program. "in recent years, Android and the mobile ecosystem changed," wrote Tal. "Android has become extremely fragmented causing serious security vulnerabilities and few or no incentives to device manufacturers to deliver software upgrades and/or security patches," he said. "Increased demand for lower-priced smartphones, coupled with the specifications arms race, has left manufacturers focused on scale and efficiency while compromising investment in software and services. Innovation cannot happen in a vacuum, which is what we have today," Tal added. The company will be moving away from its former model which involved it shipping the full-stack of the operating system, the company says. Its new program will instead allows manufacturers to introduce their own, customizable smartphones that use different parts of the Cyanogen OS via dynamic modules and MODs, while still using the ROM of their choice. That means they could still run stock Android on their devices, then pick and choose the pieces of Cyanogen's technology they want to also add. The full Cyanogen OS is still available and being sold, but is no longer the main focus. In July, Cyanogen Inc. laid off 20 percent of its workforce and sent a letter from McMaster to employees admitting that, despite shipping millions of devices with its OS, was "not scaling fast enough nor in an efficient manner."
So their solution is to fragment the ecosystem even more?
If they stop releasing unmolested pure open OS images then what good are they going to be?
If I cant rip out the Craptastic shitpile that Samsung has in the phone as well as the crap that AT&T shovels in and get it back to a pure android with optional enhancements that they are known for then I dont see where they will go.
Cyanogenmod was the ONLY highly trusted alternative to make an android phone back into a decent device. It was the only way I was able to make the HTC One M8 into something tolerable and get rid of that craptastic "sense" that they force on you.
I really hope the CEO is mis quoted, because the Cyaongenmod OS images are what make android phones great.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yeah. Definitely not regretting going for a Nexus 6P at my last upgrade!
These assholes wouldn't know science if it kicked them in the nuts.
Seriously not trying to troll. With the granular privacy settings in stock, what does Cyanogenmod really offer over AOSP now?
Seems the best option would be a new team that focuses on making a stable AOSP that's updatable and supports a variety of hardware other then the Nexus line, may it RIP.
..the death spiral. CM losing any niche it once had- a shame.
... Linux doesn't "have" a CEO.
Bottom line: should have stayed a community supported effort. As soon as they got a CEO I promptly nuked everything CM related I had.
It is astonishing what people will put up with.
Most devices don't get a stable Cyanogen release for years if ever. I still rock a HTC One M8, a very capable and reliable device that I haven't felt the need to move away from yet and Cyanogen has made almost no effort to fix the bugs in their release for it. I'm happy I didn't have to pay for it, because it honestly wouldn't be worth paying for given the fact that they abandon projects so quickly and without notice.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
It's sounds like cyan are desperately trying to find something they can flog to mugs,how about you write an OS for yourselves boys ?with the latest land grab by Google for their own walled garden,I would have thought the ground is ripe for a decent OS that is not tied to android at all,but then having given in and used cyan on a nexus7,I soon found that most of it was hype and rubbish,one day I may actually be able to recover the nexus from the bootloop it's still stuck in !!
But I suspect that cyan don't actually have the skills to do the job,or that anyone would trust them enough to A)invest in cyan B) buy an is they did develop.
Shoutout sir mez, koush, that turtle dude on HPTP, jesusxxx, cool background. Cm7 was the shit.
Bring back the skateboard
Android-wifi-tether for life
And droidsheep
Cm was amazing, y'all noobs is kanged
It is open source, they require community feedback and support. We are used to everything working on desktop Linux now but once upon a time every regular user had to know modprobe, arguments in /etc , chmod just to get sound from their PC on Linux. I still remember IO address and IRQ of my sound card.
I am not saying it is your fault or submit patches. Cyanogen got into this death spiral because at some point, they lost one thing that runs it. Community. Android community hates them. Just 2 years ago people purchased handsets based on Cyanogen compatibility. I heard they even bundled Trudialer as default dialer/phonebook application. Something even lamest company couldn't imagine.
Apologies, /. mobile always puts Firefox into some uncontrollable CPU load so subject got terrorised by autocorrect and submitted.
Yeah, the purported security benefits of heterogeneous systems don't fully apply here. Different android versions are still getting a lot of common code on top of them with google play services incorporating more components to help deal with various vendors not offering updates. Speaking of updates, how many stagefright fixes posted now, and how many vendors not keeping up anyway?
When you live in a sick society, just about everything you do is wrong.