Marking the end of an era, CyanogenMod is no more. The popular custom ROM for Android devices has been officially shut down by its parent company, Cyanogen Inc.
The announcement came on the 23rd, with a simple announcement that nightly builds and services would be discontinued by the end of the year. However, the shutdown came sooner than expected, and on the 24th, during Christmas Eve, the site was taken down entirely.
However, many developers have taken the source code and started a new project, dubbed LineageOS. As of right now, the main page only assures the viewer “Yes, this is us. LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was. To quote Andy Rubin, this is the definition of open. A company pulling their support out of an open source project does not mean it has to die.” A Github containing forked code has also been set up. This new fork would not be allowed to use the CyanogenMod name or branding, but the source code would remain the same.
While Cyanogenmod was an open source project, the company had attempted to form partnerships with hardware manufacturers, most notably partnering with Microsoft and Oppo, the makers of the OnePlus phone. The Microsoft partnership was to bundle Microsoft applications in the proprietary distribution CyanogenOS. In this version of Android, Cortana would have replaced Google Now, and apps like Skype and Office would have been integrated into the OS. The partnership with Oppo came to an abrupt end when Cyanogen signed an exclusivity agreement with another vendor for the Indian market.
