Cyanogen OS which was to take on Google’s Android OS breathes its last, shutting down services and OS by the end of the year
There was a time when CyanogenOS nightly’s were the flavor of the season. The Cyanogen Mod team sought to overtake search behemoth, Google’s Android operating system and had the backing of Microsoft and Wipro. But it seems that they lacked the wherewithal to take on the giant and are now closing shop.
There is bad news for users that have devices which run the CyanogenOS and Cyanogen Mods. Cyanogen Inc. on Friday announced that it will be discontinuing all services and Cyanogen-supported nightly builds by December 31st. However, developers who want to build CyanogenMods can continue to build it on their own.
“As part of the ongoing consolidation of Cyanogen, all services, and Cyanogen-supported nightly builds will be discontinued no later than 12/31/16. The open source project and source code will remain available for anyone who wants to build CyanogenMod personally,” the company said in a blog post on Saturday.
The short notice announcement comes after Cyanogen experienced difficult moments through the past few months. Early this year, Cyanogen Team had laid off a considerable portion of its staff and also had to let go its CEO. Currently, Cyanogen’s new focus is on producing Android OS “mods” for OEMs.
Cyanogen launched its first release, version 3.1, on July 1st, 2009. Over 50 million people run CyanogenMod on their Android smartphones. As the company shuts down, it has been offering CM14.1, based on Android 7.1.
Users with Android smartphones that run the Cyanogen OS, for instance like the OnePlus One, will now have to make the transition to CyanogenMod ROM OS project to keep their devices updated. For those unfamiliar, CyanogenMod is not really a commercial product but instead a public OS managed by a community of developers. Since it is not a commercial product, users will unlikely receive the same service and support that they received while with Cyanogen.
What a pity 🙁