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Comment by otalp | Hacker News Reader

To avoid confusion, CynagenMod will still be available, but I don't know how long it can continue without Cyanogen Inc. Cyanogen Inc. is what is shutting down.

But this probably means no more OTA updates for current OnePlus's

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For the record, Cyanogenmod existed for 4 years before cyanogen inc. We will have a short transition period as 'inc' shuts down and cyanogenmod is rebranded, but cyanogen himself says he is happy to rebrand (https://twitter.com/cyanogen/status/804890637505966081)

CyanogenMod only available until December 31st. [1]

[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/the-death-of-cyangenmod-and-w...

OnePlus phones haven't used Cyanogen in a while. They run OnePlus' skin, OxygenOS.

Some of us still have the earlier models that do. (Although it seems they now ship Oxygen backports for the One)

The only model released with CyanogenOS was OnePlus One.

I do.

Is there a way to "upgrade" to oxygenOS? Or even re-install with oxygenOS?

Yes see https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/oxygenos-2-1-4-for-the-on...

Given this news will probably try this.

I used Oxygen OS on my One Plus One since it was released and love it. Feels much lighter than CyanogenMod. Also, I think only old Oxygen OS are available and no newer ones

OxygenOS is actually base on AOSP base. It's not just a skin. It's an Android flavour built from scratch

and unlike CM (unsure about COS) they do not transparently provide any of their patches to the Android components or other non-vendor-NDA addons that they include in their image.

that isn't exclusive to OP, though, of course - every other vendor I can imagine does the exact same to any non-hardware customizations they apply to the OS.

This has to do more with Google and the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) and their terrible restrictions. A company can't distribute a phone with Gapps if they product Amazon Fire devices. Samsung even got shit for using Skyhook instead of Google for location services (Skyhook is still battling this in court):

http://penguindreams.org/blog/the-philosophy-of-open-source-...

Skyhook lost the suit against Google in 2014

Originally OnePlus One shipped with CyanogenOS, but the Cyanogen Inc fuct up and sold exclusive rights to CyanogenOS to a domestic carrier in India.

This blocked the sale of OnePlus One phone in India until this could get resolved. OxygenOS was the answer to this. Fork of Cyanogenmod with some rebranding and a few added things.

Personally I bought the OnePlus One because it came with Cyanogen. I wasn't happy with all the added cruft in CyanogenOS, so I reflashed to Cyanogenmod soon after a stable version was available.

I'm currently using OxygenOS on my OnePlus 3, but will flash to Cyanogenmod eventually to run more bleeding edge and get some features back that I miss.

This shouldn't effect OnePlus 3 as they terminated thier agreement with Cyanogen Inc after the India licencing problem.

> but the Cyanogen Inc fuct up and sold exclusive rights to CyanogenOS to a domestic carrier in India.

It's boggling there has been no official word from Cyanogen Inc on why this happened. I never liked the OnePlus marketing or press, plus I had a OnePlus One with that terrible grounding/touchscreen crazy issue.

Just judging from OnePlus's support, I have a feeling Cyanogen was getting sick of them too. I'm sure there's much more to their fallout than what's been made available. Considering my experience with OnePlus's product, I'd probably side more with Cyanogen.

There was a lot of controversy in the open source community about Cyanogen's partnership with Microsoft. It seemed like good idea when you think of Microsoft pushing more Android products and their internal divisions trying to break away from their own failing phone market. But I guess that effort failed as well. Did they ever release any phones with CyanogenOS + Cortana?

Could you say any more or point me to any references about problems with OnePlus, please? I'm looking at getting a new phone soon and was thinking of one of theirs, and your comment is the first substantial negative comment I've seen about them so far.

Not carrier, but manufacturer in India - Micromax

Just to clarify, OnePlus is completely unaffected by this? I've been considering buying a ONePlus recently which is why I ask.

Yes, their stock Oxygen OS ROM is quite stable and you should be perfectly happy with it, there's a pretty good community around it even if CyanogenMod were to completely vanish too.

OnePlus has had some build quality issues when they were first setting up their supply line, but lately I've had very good luck with their devices. Great specs for cheap, like the Nexus line used to represent.

Excellent, thanks for the clarification. I'm looking forward to making this my next phone. Cheers.

Only OnePlus One came with Cyanogen. They have released 4 phones since then.

OnePlus 3 is underated, it is awesome. I have a Google pixel XL and the OnePlus 3 is as fast but thinner and lighter and about half the price. I wish them. More success.

I have the 3 and I love it. I can't compare it to a real flagship (like Galaxy or Pixel) but for $300 I got a really great phone that people always comment on.

Not only do I completely agree, but I'd also choose my OnePlus 3 over my old Galaxy S6.

You can throw my vote in for the OnePlus.

I used to switch phones pretty regularly and since getting my OnePlus 2, the only phone I'd upgrade to would be the 3 or the new 3T.

The one thing I absolutely loved was not having all of the bloat of the carrier apps on the phone when you get it. Totally stripped down and fully customizable.

I don't know much about the team behind Cyanogen, i just know i love it and don't want it to die but it looks like management is starting to make some silly calls. I'm definitely getting that abandon ship feeling I've learned to trust over the years. Are there similar projects worth looking into? Ill go back to my Nokia 8210 before i go back to vendor controlled Android.

I have had CyanogenMod on my phones for the past few years of nightlies. I am sad they are dissolving. Other roms I liked:

http://en.miui.com has some nice UX

http://paranoidandroid.co is nice if you want security

http://aokp.co has been around for years and stays cutting edge

As you've been using nightly builds, you haven't been using Cyanogen, but been running Cyanogenmod. CyanogenOS is closed source fork of Cyanogenmod. Available for only certain devices. That means that Cyanogenmod is actually a good alternative to Cyanogen

Ah, correct. I have been using Cyanogenmod, not CyanogenOS. I will update my post.

Nothing about paranoid android was security oriented to my memory. They used to have some cool features like HOLO and dynamic DPI switching, but basically lost all of that as android versions came out and they didn't keep up.

Paranoid Android has NO additional security mechanisms over AOSP. It's based on CM with added UI/UX features. The name is not indicative of the type of ROM it is.

CopperheadOS is what you want if you're concerned about security.

Ahh, well that is a disappointing name. Thanks for the correction.

To be honest, you should probably not recommend something as secure if you have not fact-checked to make sure that the thing you have recommended actually emphasizes security at a minimum.

While I am happy Copperhead OS is around, it only supports a very limited set of Nexus devices. Back in the pre-Signal days Open Whisper Systems started their own work on an Android fork called WhisperCore. I'm curious if any of the features from WhisperCore ever made it into a new ROM, or if it was all quietly abandoned.

It was all abandoned, but many similar features made it into CM. Things like separating the seeding passphrase/PIN/pattern for FDE from the lockscreen and lockscreen PIN randomization were once features in CyanogenMod.

The former, FDE key separation, feature is gone and you'll need to either use adb or a 3rd party application [0] to achieve it.

It shouldn't be too hard to pull kernel patches from CopperheadOS and apply it to a clean AOSP tree for different devices -- this is obviously after they have done all the heavy lifting.

0. https://github.com/xmikos/SnooperStopper

You shouldn't need the whole tree for kernel patches.

AOKP hasn't released anything tangible in years. It's sad too, since they were one of my favorite ROMs back in KitKat.

Their management had a huge fiasco in India a couple of years ago. They already had an exclusive deal to sell Cyanogen branded phones with One Plus earlier, and they broke it and made another deal with Micromax company overnight. There was a large shitstorm in the android and open source world, and Cyanogen's image had suffered.

The big question I have is regarding the current CyanogenMod nightly builds. Will Cyanogen continue to run the build servers for the time being or will a current user need to setup an Android build environment for any newer CyanogenMod ROM builds?

The article is only 2 sentences long, and says no: "all services and Cyanogen-supported nightly builds will be discontinued no later than 12/31/16"

Thanks. Yup. https://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/a-fork-in-the-road

You mean OnePlus Ones

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