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Cyanogen, Which Wanted To 'Put A Bullet In Google's Head', Has Died

One of the most beloved open source projects in Android community has been discontinued.
Geek.com

If you were an early adopter of Android or used to geek out about the operating system online, it is guaranteed that you would have come across the name Cyanogen. The company, Cyanogen Inc. is now pulling out support for all the custom ROM nightly builds and cyanogen services starting from 31 December.

Nightly builds are developer-made iterations of the custom build of Android operating system. The company has now forked into a new operating system called Linage OS. The details of which will be revealed soon.

A developer named Steve Kondik (cyanogen) started this project in 2009 with a bunch of others to build a community that would tweak the Android in a more useful way for the enthusiasts. The community built different versions supporting different devices and that course of action grew popular with Android enthusiasts who wanted more than the device manufacturer's customization.

Google later sent a cease and desist letter to cyanogen asking them to pull out all of their builds since they were using certain Google services and apps. Later, the community decided to move the Google apps and services out of the core OS and offered them as apps.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

In 2013, the project turned into a legit company called Cyanogen Inc to offer the custom OS to the device manufacturer. OnePlus was the first one in India to jump on the bandwagon. However, Micromax's subsidiary YU had signed a contract of exclusivity with Cyanogen. Yu went to the Delhi court to seek a temporary ban on the sale of OnePlus devices. There was a threat of Indian OnePlus users not receiving the updates as well. So the relationship between the company and OnePlus soured.

OnePlus built a custom Oxygen OS and ditched the CyaongenOS for OnePlus 2. Ironically, even Yu decided to let go of CyanogenOS because of several issues after a few devices. It was a similar story for some other device maker partnerships across the globe.

Last year CEO Kirk Macmaster even said that 'We are putting a bullet through Google's head' in an interview. In July this year, the company fired 20% of its staff and started to wrap up different parts of the operating system. The company supported over 150 device builds at one point of time. It is really an end of the era in Android world.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.