Discussion: Is Cyanogen Mod Alienating Itself From The Rom Community?

[DroidModderX]

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Cyanogen Mod started as a continuation of a Rom by developer JesusFreke who retired from development of his HTC Dream rom way back in 2009. He suggested that his users convert to developer Cyanogen's version of Jesus Freke's rom which had been further enhanced. With the help of a team of developers Cyanogen's Rom quickly became popular on several other devices. Today it is hands down the most popular custom Rom for Android. It has logged over 12 Million installs to date! The rom became so popular in fact that founder Steve Kondik was able to secure multiple investors to begin a corporation. Cyanogen Mod has now been the stock UI on more than one OEM device, including the recently released OnePlus One.

These days Cyanogen Mod is as popular as ever, but it can often feel like less time is being spent on the Rom community that embraced CM in the first place. Last week Cyanogen Mod announced its latest Snapshot build CM 11 M8. The new snapshot brings CM official support to a few new devices, but it seems that the M8 build is overwhelmingly not available on some of the more recent flagships and even most of last years flagships. This is a bit discouraging because CM has always officially supported all of the mainstream devices, and the devices that were not officially supported at least attracted the support of official Rom maintainers. Some official rom maintainers are doing an excellent job. Dhacker is still keeping up all of the older Motorola devices including the Droid Bionic, but others are just plain absent. This is not to say that Nightlies are not being kept up, because you can still find nightly builds for more than 50 devices. We are just talking about Snapshot builds.

Is it just me or does it feel like Cyanogen Mod is focusing more on the corporate side of things these days? The OnePlus One has been popular but has not been as well received in the Rom community because it has been mostly impossible to get. With a limited supply and high demand they have decided to go the route of invites instead of preorders. This means that someone has to invite you to purchase the phone or you are just out of luck. Is the lack of support just a sign of the times? Do you think Roms are becoming less relevant? If you were a crack flasher before are you still a crack flasher today. I have found that I am a crackflasher the first several weeks of owning a device, but once I find a rom i like I stick with it.

This thread is not meant to be a cry fest, rather this is meant to be a discussion starter. What are your thoughts on the state of Cyanogen Mod, or Root and Roms in general?

 

[pc747]

I have met few developers who have gone on to maintain for CM and have to say they are a talented group. First if it was not for developers like these who did it for the love of it android would not be where it is at now. It is clear that oems have been making money off many of the same ideas these same devs brought to the community for free. And let's be honest the developers that do this sacrifice time and money to provide us with awesome development over the years. The community frown upon developers when they "sell" their rom but at the same time we have no problem throwing money at oems. If the only way the CM team can bring in money to further development is to put it on a device to sell I am not against the idea and with that will probably come some exclusives for the manufacturing partner.
With that said I just hope the money they make they use to share with the maintainers in one form or another and they do not lose the hunger to where they stop developing for the community.
Personally all of my devices are rooted and I was a big crackflasher but now with xposed I just run stock rom with a few mods from xposed.

 

[UltraDroid]

I had a friend who was a developer for XDA Forums, and he told me once that a 10 year old kid with a good paper route made more money than your average developer did from their software. That was several years ago, and I guess things could have changed.

 

[johnomaz]

I think its lacking on several of the newest flagship devices because OEMs are getting better at locking them down into oblivion. My work finally got us Galaxy S4s for our work phones. I work in IT and we were walking around with 5 year old sprint flip phones. I pushed hard for either a MotoX or MotoG phone for the department but they got the S4 because it was free from AT&T. Day 1 I asked if I could 'tinker' with it and was told as long as I didn't break it I could do whatever I wanted with it. Needless to say, after I got home I found out within 10 minutes that the bootloader was locked down and I couldn't do much but flash modified TouchWiz ROMs. What I wanted was vanilla Android and would have settled for CM also but I didn't want to run the safestrap recovery and run a ROM in a virtual rom slot. Its a work around instead of being able to flash the actual phone. All the companies are doing this now, even on TMobile. My personal HTC M8 finally has S-Off if you pay $25 which isn't a bad cost but for many, including myself, its a necessary cost since my phone doesn't work with the Firewater S-Off method. I don't mind paying the $25 when I decide to do it but I personally am stuck with a Sense ROM because I need/want wifi calling. Thankfully Sense 6 isn't that bad.

Overall, I feel CM is doing something right, they are trying to get manufacturers to run their ROM as their stock ROM and in doing so, they have to be able to provide us with an OEM level stability. Because of that, I feel they have to slow down, test test test and even more testing before major releases are released. It may not be helping the dev community like it used to but it is helping the comsumers more.

 

[DroidModderX]

I think its lacking on several of the newest flagship devices because OEMs are getting better at locking them down into oblivion. My work finally got us Galaxy S4s for our work phones. I work in IT and we were walking around with 5 year old sprint flip phones. I pushed hard for either a MotoX or MotoG phone for the department but they got the S4 because it was free from AT&T. Day 1 I asked if I could 'tinker' with it and was told as long as I didn't break it I could do whatever I wanted with it. Needless to say, after I got home I found out within 10 minutes that the bootloader was locked down and I couldn't do much but flash modified TouchWiz ROMs. What I wanted was vanilla Android and would have settled for CM also but I didn't want to run the safestrap recovery and run a ROM in a virtual rom slot. Its a work around instead of being able to flash the actual phone. All the companies are doing this now, even on TMobile. My personal HTC M8 finally has S-Off if you pay $25 which isn't a bad cost but for many, including myself, its a necessary cost since my phone doesn't work with the Firewater S-Off method. I don't mind paying the $25 when I decide to do it but I personally am stuck with a Sense ROM because I need/want wifi calling. Thankfully Sense 6 isn't that bad.

Overall, I feel CM is doing something right, they are trying to get manufacturers to run their ROM as their stock ROM and in doing so, they have to be able to provide us with an OEM level stability. Because of that, I feel they have to slow down, test test test and even more testing before major releases are released. It may not be helping the dev community like it used to but it is helping the comsumers more.

AT&T used to be laxed but they are just as bad as Verizon these days. T-mobile is still a bit better because you can buy an unlocked device and bring it to their network. Their version of the LG G3 will release with an unlockable bootloader, so they seem to be the only carrier still willing to allow this stuff on their network. I know that Verizon offers developer edition devices, but i think they do it months later intentionally to spite the mod community who wants the devices. These dev edition devices never gain traction and rom developers mostly focus on consumer devices.

I have to agree that CM is actually helping the overall consumer by offering a developer friendly experience at an OEM level. It's just unfortunate that the rom side ends up losing out.

 

[pc747]

Yeah but the difference between At&T and verizon is you have the option to buy an unlocked phone like a nexus 5 and put it on their network. At this day in age I understand the desire for carriers to lock and bloat. I am not saying I agree with it but it is easier to except when you have options. If you tell me that I can either buy a phone subsidized by a carrier that come with bloat and is locked down but I also have a choice to buy the same phone with out the bloat and unlocked but I have to pay full price I am ok with the choice. So At&T gets an edge up over Verizon because of the ability to buy unlocked devices.