

Cyanogen raises $7 million to build a better version of Android - eigenvector
http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/18/4742828/cyanogen-raises-7-million-to-build-the-best-version-of-android

======
veeti
It's amazing that a group of volunteers can do a much better job at improving
the stock AOSP experience than huge companies like Samsung or LG. The official
software on some of the Android flagships out there is seriously awful. Best
of luck to them.

~~~
mtinkerhess
Cyanogen may be better for the end user, especially the technically savvy end
user, but the metric of success for manufacturers' Android variants are a
mixture of end user experience and other factors like brand differentiation.
It's possible that they're achieving exactly what they're trying to, which
basically boils down to being able to produce an ad that shows off the
features that their phones have that their competitors' Android phones don't.
Once the sale is made it doesn't matter too much how awesome the user
experience is or isn't.

~~~
soperj
It's short term thinking like that, that leads to people actually accepting
Apple's "walled garden".

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malandrew
If anyone from Cyanogen is reading this, I'd love to know if you guys have any
plans to make CM the most secure OS on the market. I hate to make this into
another NSA thread, but it would be awesome if CM focused on making a phone
that I can trust to do my bidding instead of the bidding of some other master
that didn't pay for the device in my pocket.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
>If anyone from Cyanogen is reading this

They are doing an AMA right now. Go tell them.

~~~
spiffytech
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mnnc6/we_are_steve_cy...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mnnc6/we_are_steve_cyanogen_kondik_and_koushik_koush/)

------
kilroy123
Used Cyanogen since my old G1 ran it. It was a better experience than the
stock android. Several android phones later, it started to be hit or miss.
Really depended on what phone you had, and how supported it was.

My question is this, is Cyanogen, or any ROM really going to be relevant
moving forward?

With all the changes to Android, moving towards one single API choke point
(with Google Play). Aren't OS updates going to be less important? I'm thinking
daily or more frequent ROM updates will get you very little in the future.

~~~
binarycrusader
From the Reddit AMA:

    
    
      We're in an interesting spot, because typically GSF is
      licensed to OEMs, not software vendors (us). But becoming
      a legitimate business entity and partnering with an OEM
      are the first steps to licensing GSF. Most of the
      technical hurdles have already been overcome (passing
      CTS).
    
      Tom Moss, who is on our board, is the ex-head of Business
      Developments and Partnerships at Google. He basically
      drafted all the agreements to license GSF, anti
      fragmentation clauses, etc. He'll be very helpful as well
      on this front moving forward.
    

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mnnc6/we_are_steve_cy...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mnnc6/we_are_steve_cyanogen_kondik_and_koushik_koush/)

So it looks like they have an answer to the Google Play problem.

~~~
kilroy123
Didn't know about that AMA thanks.

------
pachydermic
This makes me worried - what I really loved more than anything else about this
project was that Cyanogenmod really tried to embrace the spirit of FOSS. Now,
in reality, it doesn't really work that way because of proprietary drivers or
google services, but the spirit was there...

Now I have my doubts about whether they'll keep true to that philosophy and
spirit. I mean, I guess Red Hat has been pretty awesome for Linux, so maybe
they'll go that route and calm my nerves a bit.

I saw someone ask whether they would remain open source in the AMA, and they
gave kind of a murky answer which involved saying that certain parts would
become closed and proprietary - really not a good start to this whole thing in
my book. The whole reason I switched to CM in the first place was to get away
from crappy closed software that I had little control over.

~~~
tikums
This is why we have Replicant.

------
jgs1
As a satisfied user of the latest CyanogenMod nightlies on a 2 year old Galaxy
S2, this is great news! CM has breathed new life into my outdated hardware.

However, I have to echo the concerns in the post's comments about Gapps[1]
(Gmail, Maps, Play Store). I wouldn't say the dependency is as strong as
something like Zynga/Facebook, but if Google ever chose to lock Gapps down, I
don't know that I'd stick with CM.

[1] [http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Gapps](http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Gapps)

~~~
pyre
Google currently has no incentive to lock down those apps. The one place that
they have the _least_ incentive to lock down is the Play Store, as CM users
will still be sending money their way.

~~~
JonFish85
Except, much like Apple's walled garden approach, they want to ensure that
what is in their app store _works_. Because if I pay for a product at your
store, and it doesn't work, I complain loudly, demand things, etc. That's a
headache to deal with, for Google, for the app developer and for someone using
a stock phone looking at an app with terrible reviews.

So in a way, they do have an incentive to make sure that unknown builds can't
access their app store.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
It is a pretty easy distinction for users to make. Google can easily add a
disclaimer that Google won't support or guarantee performance on non-Android
devices. If they want to keep CM users happy about that they can offer trial
versions so that users can test, or maybe even offer a money-back guarantee
for an app.

------
zxcvvcxz
Whoa.

First of all, I didn't know you could just build an operating system startup
(edit - in 2013). Second of all, they seem to offer some pretty compelling
features, but more importantly, solve the pain point of supporting older
phones that don't get the new Android OSs.

Question - they alluded to revenue generation in the article, stating that "If
you’re the default OS on a device and you have 50 million users, there are a
lot of ways to make money,". What are some of these ways?

~~~
dotBen
The current friction point is loading the CM-OS onto your existing device
_(rooting, boot loaders, . /adb push, etc)_.

Offering a self-service tool that does it - either on the phone or via USB is
something many will pay $20-$50 for I would guess.

Once you've got the OS on the phone, you can offer your own App Store
_(potentially along side the Google Play store)_ , auto-install apps and
perhaps set defaults like search engine to be google-competitors in return for
revenue.

They might also sell direct to OEMS, especially smaller handset OEMS, so the
OEM doesn't have to worry about participating in the Android ecosystem
directly.

------
r0h1n
Here's the post from Benchmark Capital on their $7 million investment in CM:
[http://mitchlasky.biz/cyanogen-mod/](http://mitchlasky.biz/cyanogen-mod/)

"CM is already in use on millions of handsets, and with the simplified
installer that the company is announcing simultaneously with this financing,
that number is sure to grow quickly. _We believe that CM is poised to become
one of the largest mobile operating systems in the world._ "

~~~
giarc
I know the VC has to show faith in the company, but that is a very strong
statement. Although I guess "one of the" is quite subjective.

------
fnordfnordfnord
They are doing an AMA right now (as of 14 minutes ago)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mnnc6/we_are_steve_cy...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mnnc6/we_are_steve_cyanogen_kondik_and_koushik_koush/)

------
slg
I am curious what the business model is for a company like this. Google and
Microsoft use their mobile OSes to sell services while Apple and Blackberry
use their mobile OSes to sell hardware. What does Cyanogen use its mobile OS
to sell?

~~~
tcoppi
They use their mobile OS to sell... their mobile OS. I'm sure there are a lot
of OEMs that would love a cheap, precompiled Android to ship with their new
devices. Less work for them, and Cyanogen gets to deal with updates and
porting.

~~~
redidas
Wasn't that kind of supposed to be the point of Android though? Granted some
work is involved with getting Android onto various hardware, but one of the
reasons cyanogen exists is because the OEMs started going way to far with
their android customization.

~~~
2bluesc
Most companies are terrible at putting together Android support and waste
money on engineering teams that don't know what they are doing. If they could
buy something that's 90% ready to rock + support contract I'd think it'd be
pretty compelling.

And with open source they wouldn't be locked into a single vendor.

------
cpeterso
CyanogenMod's quality has gone down in the past few months. I'm running CM
10.1 on a Nexus 4. The home screen crashes occasionally and, after the most
recent update, my ringer doesn't ring. Community QA is a tough problem.

------
chroem
Does anybody remember what the spat with that one Cyanogenmod contributor was
all about a few weeks ago? I'm ashamed to say that I don't remember what it
was, and now I can't find anything on it.

He was talking about about some kind of scandal as they were about to monetize
the project.

~~~
pachydermic
I remember that something was up, but not the specifics.

I have a bad feeling about this whole thing.

------
bproper
CyanogenMod, the company’s free open-source replacement firmware, has more
than 8 million users, CEO Kirt McMaster says. But that counts only users who
have elected to share data with Cyanogen, he says, estimating that the true
number is two to three times that amount. "There’s always been lot of talk
around who’s going to be the third dominant mobile computing platform," says
McMaster, who previously co-founded Boost Mobile. "Windows Phone would
probably be number three now. If you look at what our actual user base is, we
might be equal to or greater than that."

~~~
amckenna
Yes I read the article. Do you have anything original to add or context for
why you chose this quote?

------
themstheones
Right now GApps, which includes things like Play Store, Chromium, Calendar,
GMail, etc., doesn't ship with cyanogen because some of the apps are closed
source. You can install it separately after the install if desired, and for
most folks I assume it makes that phone a lot more useful.

I wonder if cyanogen started to make enough inroads on android's market share
if Google would try to make it more difficult to install GApps.

~~~
JeremyNT
This is the thought I immediately had.

Cyanogenmod thrives based on a couple of very grey legal areas:

\- first, as you mention, the ability to install the "Google Apps" binaries,
which include basic functionality (Play Store, google service apps, etc). If
Cyanogenmod is viewed as any sort of threat, Google can immediately crack down
on this distribution. CM could still be useful without Google services, but it
would be decidedly less useful.

\- second, the ability to acquire and redistribute proprietary binaries which
ship with devices and make them actually work. A majority of CM-running
devices rely on binary blobs extracted from the vendor's software for hardware
support; CM rips them from the factory install and redistributes them.

So CM in its present form is dependent on 1) Google's good graces in allowing
gapps to be redistributed and 2) manufacturers looking the other way on the
redistribution of their proprietary blobs.

The only conclusion I can come to is that CM must position itself as a non-
threat to the business models of both manufacturers and Google. That will be
an interesting tightrope to walk.

------
apayan
Steve Kondik and Koushik Dutta are on reddit doing an AMA right now with more
substantial information than what the verge article provides.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mnnc6/we_are_steve_cy...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mnnc6/we_are_steve_cyanogen_kondik_and_koushik_koush/)

------
kwhinnery
Amazing news for this team. Really excited to see what they build.

------
shavenwarthog2
Wonderful news. I've used three different major versions of CM on my antique
wheezy Nook Color, and it's made all the difference. Salud!

------
sciwiz
Link to the blog post:
[http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/a_new_chapter](http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/a_new_chapter)

