The company behind the beleagured Cyanogen OS has announced that it’s winding down all its services and will stop releasing nightly builds of the software by the end of the year.
In a brief update posted late Friday, Cyanogen explained that as part of an ongoing consolidation “all services and Cyanogen-supported nightly builds will be discontinued no later than 12/31/16” but that all the open source code will remain available.
It’s a decision that’ll likely disappoint Cyanogen’s user base, who tend to be loyal fans to the company’s uniquely tweaked version of Android. The news means that anyone using a device that shipped with the Cyanogen OS (like some OnePlus and Wileyfox handsets) will need to switch across to the community-led and non-commercial Cyanogenmod OS project to keep their devices updated.
While it might upset some people in the short term, it’s part of a move to re-angle Cyanogen OS to be more attractive to handset makers – it previously required wholesale unbundling of Google’s services and replacing them with Cyanogen’s, which wasn’t winning enough OEMs over.
So, the Cyanogen OS isn’t entirely going away, but will instead allow device manufacturers to pick and choose what aspects of the new “modular” OS they’d like to use in their handsets.
This, presumably, final announcement of 2016 is the end of a tumultuous 2016 for Cyanogen, which has seen the departure of both the company’s co-founder Steve Kondik and its former CEO Kirk McMaster, as well as the shuttering of its Seattle office and a number of layoffs.
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Think Cyanogen’s modular approach is a smart move? Disappointed by the end of its services? Let us know in the comments below!
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
