CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available [LWN.net]

CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available

Posted Jun 27, 2012 5:43 UTC (Wed) by aorth (subscriber, #55260)
In reply to: CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available by dlang
Parent article: CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available

> I haven't tried watching the CyanogenMod folks recently, but I've dealt with some of the same people in other forums and I think that Robert has a point.

The problem is, CyanogenMod isn't a for-profit company with employees who work 9-5; it's you, it's me, and a couple hundred other people just hacking in their free time. And forum users are... um... :)

Far too much of the Android rom community works under the 'develop completely privately and then throw the resulting rom over the wall to users' mentality. Even though the software has source available, they treat things more like reverse engineering binary firmware than software development and porting.

Well, the "Android ROM community" you're talking about pretty much doesn't exist. 90% of the "ROMs" on XDA forums, for example, are simply repackaged versions of stock vendor ROMs (unzip, replace applications, PNG files, etc); as far as custom community ROMs, you have CyanogenMod, and then a few others which wouldn't exist if CyanogenMod didn't exist. Android Open Kang Project, CodenameAndroid, etc all draw heavily on CyanogenMod developments.

On that note, CyanogenMod wouldn't exist if AOSP didn't exist. It sucks that Google doesn't develop 100% in the open, but nobody says they have to.

There's also surprisingly little attention paid to what work is being done by other people, each developer releases their own system image, and when one person fixes one thing, and another person fixes something else, you are very unlikely to find a firmware image that includes both fixes.

But that's not CyanogenMod's fault really. I maintain a CyangenMod 7 port as well as a CyanogenMod 9 port (two completely different devices), and there's no way for me to know everything that happens in every other device's port. I chat on IRC, I read the Gerrit code review, but I still miss things from time to time. There's really no way to do that better; it comes down to the individual devs.

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CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available

Posted Jun 27, 2012 6:08 UTC (Wed) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]

I understand your points as well, but the problem is the culture of "modding ROMs" instead of building Android distributions. That culture probably stems simply from the huge user base, many of which do not have a background in being interested in long term goals like buildable, testable, maintainable free software.

Or the problem is only a problem if you look at it that way, but for example I wouldn't consider any of these random blob:d mod-monsters if I'd be looking at Android. Replicant looks good but of course has a lot of the (real) work to be done.

Sure my Nemo Mobile for Nokia N9 or even Debian for my shipping-in-two-weeks GTA04 (to a very little extent) also have blobs included, but at least they're properly packaged, the blobs are separated, the distributions are build from the sources and are being maintained according to good practices. But of course they've the GNU/Linux background. I'd welcome a bit of GNU thinking to Android world as well. Not the manifesto but the culture of building long-living projects with beautifully building code.

CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available

Posted Jun 27, 2012 8:20 UTC (Wed) by aorth (subscriber, #55260) [Link]

Re: modding ROMs. There's a quote which always cracks me up:

"XDA has cooks, most of them grill, pan fry, or broil...none of them develop."

Yeah, an OpenWRT-like Android ROM distribution would be cool. CyanogenMod's the closest thing there is in the Android ecosystem. Unfortunately phones aren't like routers; most phones are essentially worthless after ~2 years, and then there's a lot of heavy lifting to do when it comes to porting new Android versions to old devices. By then the vendor has abandoned the device, and the onus is on regular people like you and me to do the porting in their free time.

Many 1- and 2-year-old phones are stuck on 2.6.32 and 2.6.35 Linux kernels, and only have blobs for things like wifi drivers. This causes problems in porting/maintaining because features of new Android versions often rely on things only found in newer Linux kernels, like input drivers which send multitouch or pressure events, hardware-accelerated drawing, different wifi stack, etc. In that case there's really nothing you can do, unless you happen to have devs which get lucky, or just spend a ton of time fixing and backporting.

CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available

Posted Jun 27, 2012 8:49 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

most phones are essentially worthless after ~2 years

I think this is largely an illusion. I have an HTC Desire (running CM7) that I bought nearly 2 years ago and it is still a very good phone. I have no intention whatsoever of replacing it anytime soon. I'm looking forward to seeing whether there will be a version of CM9 for it.

People tend to replace their phones every 2 years because their contract is up and they can conveniently get a newer phone. In this sense, a two-year-old phone may be »worthless« in an economic sense in that the mobile ISP has written it off, but it is not necessarily »worthless« from a technical point of view (such that it would not be worth supporting by something like CM).

CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available

Posted Jun 27, 2012 12:11 UTC (Wed) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]

After two years you're lucky to get any updates from your carrier. Phones aren't useless after two years if developers like aorth commit their time and effort to supporting them. I have a phone I purchased in 2010. The carrier abandoned it. Thanks to the CM developers, I can still use it with reasonable confidence that it's secure and maintained.

CyanogenMod 9.0-rc1 available

Posted Jun 27, 2012 22:45 UTC (Wed) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

You seem to be confusing CyanogenMod with the ROM modders at XDA. CyanogenMod actually is trying to be a real full Android distribution, based on AOSP.