Part of the problem is the confusing naming. I'm an Android fan and I can't tell the difference between CyanogenMod, Cyanogen OS, Cyanogen Inc and Cyngn. Terrible way to run a business and project when it's too hard to separate out what they each do by a unique name.

The conflation was deliberate. They wanted to trade on the good name of the original open project.

It was nothing sinister. Cyanogen himself, Steve Kondik, was the CEO of the new company. They were 100% open about it.

Once you've made a for profit enterprise, it's fundamentally deceptive to trade on the good will of things like volunteering, charity, add open source, because the incentive structure and relationship has changed. Someone selling me a OS for profit should be trusted far less than someone who does it for free and/or as a labor of love or duty.

There's a buying power that a consumer has that a user of something provided for free doesn't, but there is also a hell of a lot more reason to cheat, lie to, defraud a consumer than a user. There's an adversarial aspect to the relationship now.

As a potentional user (having a FF OS mobile, for example) I never even learnt the name and I do not even know how to pronunce it correctly till today - seriously, the name was probably the most important reason why I do not have a mobile with the CM system on it, because it is hard to search for something you do not remember, to talk about it, etc. (I am not an English native speaker, not living in an English-speaking country.)

I'm a user of CM for many years. I don't know any person's name in CM team, but I wish everyone who's behind the curtain have a good future and thanks for all your contribution.

I have read this and another post from CM team. I somehow missed what the main catalyst was for shutting down. Is there a succinct explanation? What happened?

Not really. Here's what's publicly known:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyanogenMod#Restructure_and_ce...

Honestly it looks to me that they just ran out of runway and dissolved into an internal power struggle, then someone representing the investor side of things came in to shut it all down and recover what could be salvaged.

There was a post on Reddit from one of the former developers warning people to disable updates (not for regular CyanogenMod, but for the commercial devices) because the company was talking about pushing adware of some kind of the devices with an unannounced update.

https://github.com/lineageos and http://lineageos.org/ Only a fork!

As mentioned within a very well hidden easter egg in their press release:

"We will take pride in our Lineage as we move forward and continue to build on its legacy."

Hard to make money selling a free OS to replace an OS the customer doesn't pay for already?

They weren't targeting users, they were targeting manufacturers (pay them and they'll do the software).

It actually makes sense as a business model, but they messed up by backstabbing their first customer (after contracting with OnePlus, they signed an exclusive contract with MicroMax that no other company can sell cyanogenos in India, which, had OnePlus not made OxygenOS, would have killed them.)

It was probably the stupidest move they could have done, as no company would trust them again, and lost them all the goodwill they had.

Crazy. Imagine if Microsoft have given a single vendor exclusive rights to sell their operating system in a major market. We wouldn't even know their name today, except as a historical curio.

In the mid 1980s, Microsoft did offer exclusive rights to someone to sell DOS in Japan. The seller did a bad job. The deal had to be unwound after 4 years.

I was unaware of that - I stand corrected :)

>>It was probably the stupidest move they could have done, as no company would trust them again, and lost them all the goodwill they had.<<

There are plenty of people in the business world that screw so many people, businesses, banks and they still manage to continue doing business. I wish there was a name for it. Madoff is an example: even after people warned others about his business being a scam he still continued doing business until he collapsed on his own. Nobody brought him down, he did it to himself.

The big lie is what they teach us as young kids, that honor actually means something.

Power is might, and if you have it nothing else seems to matter, virtually always.

Screwing other people is possible when you are at (or near) the top of the pile. When you're at the bottom, it just gets you killed.

If you screw your 100th customer, you have 99 customers who are pretty likely to write it off. If you screw your first customer, it's a warning to others.

There are a fair amount of internet companies that started off as goodwill projects, though.

Android is "free" to the consumer, but the payment is that if you want all of the Google apps (which are no longer part of the open source stuff) and the consumer uses the Google apps (likely), all of the search revenue goes to Google.

> Android is "free" to the consumer, but the payment is that if you want all of the Google apps (which are no longer part of the open source stuff) and the consumer uses the Google apps (likely), all of the search revenue goes to Google.

The payment is your private information.

That too, although unpersonalized search ads are worth a lot more money than your private information.

Good point, but for the record none of the Google apps were ever open source - they were part of the compatibility suite from the start.

They did start replacing a couple of the open source apps with Google versions, though (like the browser.)

I was thinking of the browser in particular -- the open source one was abandoned a while ago, and the proprietary one has google hard-wired as the only search engine.

The numerous China Android based OS's, that are void of Google services, would disagree.

Excuse me, disagree how? They don't use the special google apps, and search revenue doesn't go to google. That's consistent with what I said. Sorry that it wasn't clear.

there's a good summary at the top of this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/5kbnfg/cyanogen_in...

I, too, am kinda left wondering 'what happened?'

They were the darling of custom ROMs before Cyanogen Inc.

When they incorporated, a lot of people hoped it would help sponsor development (while others, suspecting what would happen, forked into OmniRom).

Unfortunately, once they incorporated, the company spokesman (McMaster) went against the whole original culture (they installed bloatware on their phones) and generally spoke without thinking (kill Google, etc.).

Now, they're seen as a weak wannabee Oracle.

As far as I know, the straw that broke the camel's back was CM inc breaking a device exclusivity contract which as one can imagine hurt revenue and anger investors. That coupled with some aggressive PR in years past lead to this.

Another tech project bites dust due to clueless managerial types trying to propel their ego...

cyanogen (the corporation) was toast when they stabbed their first major customer, oneplus, in the back...

copy and paste follows:

tl;dr: Cyanogen terminated their contract with OnePlus all of a sudden to enter an exclusive agreement with another company in India, causing the phone to be banned in the country. This is widely seen as a dick move.

OnePlus had a worldwide (excluding mainland China) non-exclusive right to use the Cyanogen trademarks and ship the software on their device. This agreement was in place for a time period, and said that Cyanogen wouldn’t work with other OEMs to develop or integrate the system during this time in the regions covered by the agreement. Cyanogen then went and made an agreement with Micromax that was exclusive (despite OnePlus already having non-exclusive rights to these countries), and told OnePlus they were terminating their agreement in an email simply saying they were terminating. Such a contract termination is most definitely unusual, and normally is not permitted without (significant) penalties... Micromax succeeded in their injunction request against OnePlus, preventing the import and sale of OnePlus devices, on account of their exclusivity deal.

https://www.xda-developers.com/cyngn-oneplus-micromax-the-le...

I bought a OnePlus One largely because it had Cyanogen. Despite the schism I continue to get regular OS updates, and it's still one of the things I most like about the phone (the non-slip covering on the back being another, oddly).

So I agree - Cyanogen had a competitive advantage, and could have been the Red Hat of Android. Signing any kind of exclusive deal killed any chance of that, and also alienated their open-minded community.

I don't think it's just hindsight that makes this sound really dumb, but it would be fascinating to find why they thought an exclusive deal was the way to go.

Now I need to find a LineageOS phone...

I know several people with a oneplus 3, and the oxygenOS oneplus has developed internally is extremely similar to the current version of cyanogen that's running on my oneplus one. It looks basically like stock AOSP married with cyanogen and has all of the same extra features/advanced user toggles.

I saw an early interview where an early founder was saying they were going to put google out of business. Wasnt a good sign.

Yeah, get in line behind Steve Ballmer.

The successors need a new name. I suggest "Public Phone". The trademark is available.

They have one. It's called LineageOS.

Blah. Sounds like another Linux distro.

I think the boring name is a good sign - Operating systems should be boring. Flashy marketing leads to the sort of drama that killed cyanogen.

The word lineage is boring? It seems to be haughty, lofty, arrogant, and so on.

Where does lineage mean that? I've never seen that definition.

"Lineage" can have a connotation of people talking about the great things their ancestors have done and attempting to somewhat attach themselves to those deeds, as well as an opportunity to look down on people of "lesser breeding".

Obviously it has positive connotations as well, but the negative ones are definitely there.

>>"Lineage" can have a connotation of people talking about the great things their ancestors have done and attempting to somewhat attach themselves to those deeds, as well as an opportunity to look down on people of "lesser breeding".

Yeah, I guess I would have failed that Rorschach test.

when someone refers to their parentage/ancestors as their "lineage" it almost always means they are royal/upper class/landed gentry, etc...

example: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/lineage-british-royal-fam...

Besides the other comments, I never said that it meant that. I was describing the word, not giving the definition.