Is CyanogenMod going the right way ?

[kuduku]

Just came across few articles about CyanogenMod future ways . They have been able to get $7 million in funding and have made Cyanogen Inc . But the issue is why keep it secret and not give a fair deal to the devs who have made contributions . As many dev have commented that doing free work for community and getting recognized is different than Cyanogen Inc selling their apps/work and not paying fairly . The motivation level is going down with lots of ups and down coming soon .
Read from one of the devs himself , who made Focal which has now gone from CM nighties .
https://plus.google.com/106978520009932034644/posts/L8FJkrcahPs

Also see the remarks of Andrew Dodd ( xda user Entropy512) on the issue .
https://plus.google.com/u/0/101093310520661581786/posts/1ev1FJpSCE3

Also Samsung Exynos4 users should also read Andrew article , how Samsung has been screwing end users ....
[url]https://plus.google.com/u/0/101093310520661581786/posts/cdPnNjLAb4F[/URL]
Its along one and available on xda also .
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2000684

I do agree that root is not required for all but should be available and should not be removed . Removing settings to comply with Google for selling CM on carriers is shortcharging the original followers .

 

[blr_p]

Define 'the right way' ?

 

[6pack]

Root access is not required in daily life IMO. The only time I needed root access was when taking backup of phone. Even taking backup of apps can be done without root access with some free apps.
Its good if they remove root access I believe. It will deter scammers who can exploit the OS with scam apps.

Edit: read the articles/posts. I think all the developers will move to paranoid or aokp roms now. Really bad way to treat developers by cygn team. How can they sell someone else code like that?

 

[kuduku]

Define 'the right way' ?

taking out features to appease carriers / google ? Not paying devs who have developed the apps/code ? Is any of this right ? Not informing the devs about selling of their codes/apps , Selling code which was developed by devs who were working free for the community not for remuneration . Forcefully trying to own the app/code . If you read articles Focal has gone and advanced settings has gone from CM
Which one is right ?

 

[blr_p]

The difficulty with assessing your question is it depends what destination(s) we arrive at. Nobody knows that though a few guesses can be made.

- CM decides it has a USP by making custom builds for carriers. The carriers then outsource their customisations to CM and let go of their internal devlopment. Its a good cost saving measure and provides regular income to the CM team.

- If CM has screwed people over then how will they sustain themselves over the long run. maybe they don't care, once the carrier payments come in, they hire their own devs and can sustain themselves.

- meanwhile what does CM do with the community. Do they go completely closed source and cut their ties or do they maintain them.

- the community is free to develop as many variants as they want, the source isn't going to be harmed, more people will join and leave as happens anyway. Those that object to CM can always pull their work out and have recourse to legal remedies.

Basically what's happening here is what happens when OS decides to capitalise on its work. Its messy but life goes on.

The Dodd posts on samsung are an interesting back story.

 

[kuduku]

@blr_p I got screwed on a S2 due to superbrick . Had to basically throw the handset .......
yes life does go on .. If CM would has started charging some fees say $10 for each device CM support would people had paid it ???? It would had been a good source of income . At some point they had to get commercialized but why remove features , just pay the devs take them on board

 

[blr_p]

- who would pay the fees ? carriers it would seem.

- nothing stopping them taking developers on, it seems the noise is about those that did not get taken on board.

i think a lot of the moves are to please the biggest customers ie carriers. Once the contracts are done nothing stops other developments from happening.

My point is its too early to tell how this CM venture is going to turn out. i'm sure a lot of people would want it to succeed.

 

[blr_p]

Interesting quote

Qualcomm has robust and up-to-date reference sources at CodeAurora that actually WORKS with little effort on handsets (HTC requires significant work, Samsung requires some, Sony handsets require almost no work to get CAF code working as Sony is smart and doesn't deviate from the ref source unless they absolutely HAVE to.)

Had sworn off sony products years ago so its interesting to see Sony seems to be making amends. Course Sony are not in the top 5 and would like to get there.

Dodd mentions Sony's behaviour is an anomaly..

2) Many people were watching Sony closely. Sony had been doing some GREAT things in terms of developer relations, but people were uneasy for two reasons:
a) Sony as a whole had a fairly bad track record of doing NASTY things to their customers - See the CD Rootkit fiasco, and OtherOS on the PS3.
b) The positive behavior of Sony Mobile was considered highly anomalous for Sony due to the Ericsson influence over that division. It was questionable whether Sony would keep things up now that they had purchased Ericsson's share of the joint venture.
That said - the ERDs were watching Sony very closely, in a good way... A number of us were hopeful that they would continue their good work in going "above and beyond" with opensource community relations to repair the reputation of the company as a whole.

OEM of the year on XDA for 2012

In just over 12 months, they had gone from suing a developer that hacked the bootloader on his own purchased device, to providing the tools to unlock the bootloader on a high-quality device and giving users the instructions to build the kernel source. No other manufacturer had done that, nor have any others to date. That is full-on GPLv2 compliance like we’ve never seen before at XDA.

Here is a useful comment form one of the users over what device to go for.

You can't go wrong with a Nexus if you want modding. Sony has completely turned around its attitude towards the dev community in recent years, so if you don't want a nexus you could look at something Sony has.

If you are not sure it may be prudent to wait till a few months to see what the modding state is at, since pretty much only the Nexus line is a sure thing.