On the day CyanogenMod moves CM10 to stable, their domain is hijacked by a community ‘member’. “We don’t like how this played out, and we are deeply hurt. Likewise, we are deeply saddened at the confusion this may have caused the community. We will continue to be open about the what, when, how, but unfortunately, we may never know the ‘why’ – though greed comes to mind. The team itself has not made a profit off of CM and that is not our goal. But to have one of our own betray the community like this is beyond our comprehension.” This makes me so angry and sad. Slightly related: it’s about damn time the Googles and Samsungs of this world invest some money and resources into CyanogenMod to give them a solid infrastructure to work with. It would be peanuts for them financially.
That would be awesome, but it won’t happen because that would serve to legitimize the project, something Google doesn’t want to do overtly.
Yeah, CM is so good that people by the hundreds of thousands are willing to void their warranty in order to install the rom on their phone. God forbid some company invest in them and actually give people what they want for a change and release a phone with CM as the default rom.
This is not that obvious that you void your warranty with custom ROM. My Motorola phone’s warranty terms does not specify anything like that. States only that if damage is *caused* by software modifications, then they can reject the warranty. In fact, I returned my phone twice for warranty repair, and each time with CyanogenMod on it: it came back repaired and with ‘upgraded’ firmware to newest stock.
I don’t know about Samsung. But I got laptop from them. It had a minor display problem and i returned it for repair. Same issue: I modified it a bit, replaced HDD with SSD, added more RAM, damn, I even disassembled it just to look at the mainboard – first day I had it. Clerks at the shop where they sold it to me said any modifications/opening voids the warranty. But it’s a bullshit, exactly the same as with Motorola. Laptop had visible signs of previous opening, but they fixed it and shipped back without any problems.
To sum up: it’s an urban legend that flashing/rooting/modifying always voids warranty. You got the warranty terms printed and it won’t hurt to read them, might not be that bad.
Generally companies will ignore simple laptop upgrades like hard drive swaps and added RAM. Even Apple would accept a Mac mini that had been “cracked” open with putty knives, as long as you didn’t break anything while you were in there.
However, there are limits. I have an older Acer laptop that uses a full size socket AM2 with a desktop class (though low-power) single core Athlon 64 CPU. When I upgraded it to a much faster dual core chip, I took the easy route and clipped a plastic frame section that was in the way. If it had still been under warranty, I would have gone the long way around and completely removed and replaced the motherboard so that it wouldn’t be obvious it had ever been opened. Doing it the way I did had no negative effect on the frame stiffness, but would have spelled certain doom for any warranty service I might have needed.
As for software mods, it certainly depends on the company in question. As a general rule I try to restore any device to the stock OS if I have to return it for service, though admittedly I very rarely return anything since I end up fixing it and/or selling it instead.
Actually Samsung employs the lead dev of CM, and they provide free phones to some of the devs to work on them. They should get a lot more recognition than they do for their support of cyanogenmod (obviously, it pales in comparison with the community’s support, but it’s still more than any other company I can call to mind).
Well my comment was specifically about Google.
I have a Samsung phone (Nexus S 4G) and while I don’t run CM on it, I’ve had it on a Nook and a Motorola phone and it was awesome. Seeing someone like Samsung put real money behind the project would be a great thing, no doubt.
Well my tuppence on whether Google, Samsung, HTC even
….might donate a little to the CM project – be it by way of money, servers, phones or maybe a little of their own engineers time
is that as others have stated, it would serve to not Only legitimise the CM project’s implementation/reimplementation but is a tacit admission that they may be, nay are, actually doing a better job than most company’s own Android offerings or customizations (at least for the technophiles amongst us).
I reckon google can much more ‘get away with’ such a helping hand (more openly!) , than Samsung, HTC..
Hah. Samsung wouldn’t invest in a project that lengthens the usable lifespan of their handsets. They’re still pretty much a hardware company, and still think like one.
Edited 2012-11-15 00:32 UTC
According to Wikipedia, the founder of CyanogenMod, Steve Kondik (a.k.a. Cyanogen) was hired by Samsung as a mobile software developer and still works there.
That’s what I read some time ago as well, but I’ve yet to see anything CyanogenMod derived in a Samsung product. They must have converted the guy to TouchPiss.
Actually having an unofficial upgrade path for technically inclined users while “encouraging” non-savvy users to upgrade to a better experience by buying a new phone sounds like a decent strategy.
It can’t help that OS development is so uncoupled from hardware development. Maybe Google should have a hardware roadmap instead of just springing new requirements and features on users/OEMs? That way midrange phones can have a chance of being upgraded without resorting to 3rd party roms.
Didn’t Samsumg give 20-odd phones to the CM team around the S2 days?
Cyanogenmod is a terrific project so hearing about someone trying to financially benefit from it like this is just deeply saddening and frustrating. Things like this hurt the whole community, seeding distrust throughout, even among the people who really are trust-worthy. It’s quite inconceivable what people are willing to do just for a short-time financial boost — I’d never be able to screw people over like this.
I don’t know, I don’t have much else to say other than that I hope they can nail the guy’s ass to the wall and don’t let the distrust seep in and distract the developers.
According to what I read on The Verge, Steve Kondik (the real one, apparently) announced that the issue has been resolved “amicably” and they have their domain back.
According to the CM site, the situation has now been resolved peacefully.
http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/domain-situation-has-been-resolved
When situations like this pop up, I always feel uneasy as people who are in no way affiliated start jumping to conclusions, and follow up by posting personal information.
It is entirely possible that this person has indeed gone through with the dick moves mentioned in the blog post, but the fact remains that we (I) don’t know the whole story.
Sometimes the personal info that gets posted is of a completely different and innocent person, who ends up getting serious shit for something they did not do, and that fact alone makes me cringe when names start being posted by people who are no way directly involved.
Vox populi. Don’t be nervous.
When those involved won’t name an individual, often for good reasons, other people are still going to try and guess. The potential for error is actually created by those that remain silent, even though they may have good reasons for doing so. Since we don’t have actual lynch mobs (mostly) anymore any case of mistaken identity can be worked through.
When people hear a story of a person being a douchebag it is natural to want to know who it is. I think modern society does too much to protect the privacy of anti-social individuals. If they were subject to the full backlash against their actions they would likely learn and self-correct quickly – look what happened here.
And the world would be a better place. Except for douchebags – but I’m supposed to care about their plight?
Don’t you know? The douchebags are the real victims.
IRL it tends to get even more nuanced than the scenario mentioned by danger_nakamura (plus he might be looking at the past through slightly rose-tinted glasses), also when we don’t care much for douchebags… reminded me about two posts I made elsewhere not too long ago
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2481754&cid=37885152
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2481754&cid=37915274
You know, with all the anti-corporate talk that goes on in these communities, maybe one of the members was a corporate supporter and wanted to hit back. Did the open community really think it could talk badly about corporations and not have some recoil? Greed isn’t the only motivation in this world…”some men just want to watch the world burn.”
“Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
Out.
And…that makes it ok?
I’m pretty sure anyone is allowed to say whatever the hell they want about any company.
In fact, if a company did sanction this kind of behavior it’s probably in legal hot water.
Never said it was okay. For a community that talks crap on corporations, and a following of anonymous hackers who uses software from said community to DDOS and worse to corporations’ servers, I’m simply saying you can’t hit someone and NOT expect to not be hit back. It’s simple human nature, and taking a passive stance on it doesn’t help.