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Cyanogen Inc.
CyanogenMod founder Steve Kondik has disclosed that he
and sixteen others are now doing their CyanogenMod work as part of a
company founded for that purpose — and that they have been doing so since
April. "You have probably seen the pace of development pick up
drastically over the past few months. More devices supported, bigger
projects such as CM Account, Privacy Guard, Voice+, a new version of
Superuser, and secure messaging. We vastly improved our
infrastructure. We’re doing more bug fixes, creating more features, and
improving our communication. We think that the time has come for your
mobile device to truly be yours again, and we want to bring that idea to
everybody." The first new thing will be an easier installer, but
there is very little information on what the business model will be.
(Log in to post comments)
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 18, 2013 20:04 UTC (Wed) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
There's a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" thread about cyanogenmod today. It's over for now, though. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mnnc6/we_are_steve...
Basically the monetization plan may be to get a whole lot of users via making CM easy to install and offering updates to all the phone models abandoned by their vendors. With enough users, there comes a way eventually to recoup the investment with profit, and these guys are probably dreaming of user numbers in order of a hundred million or more. After all, CM seems to have got to 7 million users with basically very difficult updating process...
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 18, 2013 21:50 UTC (Wed) by gmaxwell (subscriber, #30048) [Link]
It'll be interesting to see if people are as tolerate of the GPL violations under this new mode of operation.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 19, 2013 5:06 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
Which GPL violations are you referring to?
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 19, 2013 13:44 UTC (Thu) by cate (subscriber, #1359) [Link]
I think he has in mind such pressures: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/17/jean_baptiste_que...
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 18, 2013 21:57 UTC (Wed) by karim (subscriber, #114) [Link]
Something doesn't sound right about this being a community project and the time delta between April and now.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 19, 2013 8:02 UTC (Thu) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562) [Link]
I understand the sentiment, but:
There very well might have been (legal, social) issues with the then-current employers of the people starting the company. You don't necessarily want to tip everyone of that you're planning to start working on your own. And before all the legal stuff is settled - which very well can take several months after the initial forming of a company - you might not want to loose your job.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 19, 2013 14:29 UTC (Thu) by karim (subscriber, #114) [Link]
I get that and agree. But still, something's amiss and I can't quite put my finger on it.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 20, 2013 12:52 UTC (Fri) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375) [Link]
I don't know. I did wonder where the Red Hat of the Android ecosystem was. This seems to be the best-placed company to do that. And I think that's where the revenue streams will come from.
I hope that they've spent the time since April building enterprise management tools for fleets of contemporary handsets -- buy in bulk and flash them so that you can give to your employees, controlling their access on your company's terms and on the hardware you choose.
K3n.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 20, 2013 12:53 UTC (Fri) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
There are a couple of things brewing here. The author of the Focal was not pleased about the treatment he received in hands of the new company, who apparently framed his contributed camera program as a CyanogenMod feature, and also asked for CLA so that they could relicense it away from GPL if necessary for some CM device or something. Some feelings were hurt in the process and Focal is now removed from the project.
There's probably also the expectation that anyone who ever contributed into the project will want to be compensated for future work done on CM: after all, there are folks now who may be becoming millionaires if things go well for them, and anyone doing something nifty into CM may feel that they deserve a part of that. Human nature is a little bit greedy like that, though I bet everyone has received more value from CM than the hours (if any) they have put in, so that should be kept in mind.
Either way, there is no doubt about it: the nature of CM will have changed from this point onwards. I predict that it must expect to run more on paid workforce from now on and must bow to contractual agreements with entities like Google and whatever hardware vendors they are in talks with, which may cause more of those fun GPL conflicts like with Focal.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 21, 2013 4:57 UTC (Sat) by karim (subscriber, #114) [Link]
I think you're probably close to the truth here. Obviously the AOSP is ASL and anyone contributing should've expected their work could've been closed-source by anyone so desiring. However, the leadership of this project had a "moral contract" with its followers. And they likely breached it by accepting work from others during several months while knowing what they were going to do. Now that the leadership is "cashing in" others will also likely think "what's in it for me." And that probably means CM is over as we knew it. Which is, I think, what you were saying anyway.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 21, 2013 12:12 UTC (Sat) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
It depends on how rational they are about the value of CM. Human instinctive morality doesn't necessarily lead to best outcomes. I'm saying that CM has changed, but not that it's over.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 20, 2013 19:54 UTC (Fri) by mbanck (subscriber, #9035) [Link]
> Something doesn't sound right about this being a community project
> and the time delta between April and now.
Here something to think about, apparently the Cyanogen Inc were trying to get GPL'd third party code dual-licensed so they can take it proprietary (and weren't very nice about it):
https://plus.google.com/106978520009932034644/posts/L8FJk...
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 20, 2013 20:42 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
Thank you very much for that link. Planning to take Cyanogen away from the GPL is not a win in my mind. I see bad things in the future and the loss of a very cool project.
I think contributors should serve notice to the new company that their code is not available for re-licensing.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 21, 2013 2:04 UTC (Sat) by johnsmith_notthatone (guest, #92971) [Link]
Quote from Guillaume Lesniak (https://plus.google.com/106978520009932034644/posts/L8FJk...) It's the money quote and could be the quote of the week:
"At that time, they also started scrapping features from CyanogenMod. Device’s “Advanced settings” disappeared, without getting a proper replacement first. Some features aren't considered as useful enough, and didn’t make it into the new CMHW HAL. Even if users want something, they won’t get it if it’s not useful enough. Save to external SD disappeared as well from the AOSP Camera app, because it breaks Google’s CTS. Root access is planned to be COMPLETELY removed by default, and to be downloaded in a separate package. Users don’t use root anyway, they say. All of this because of a future CyanogenMod Phone, which has to pass CTS to get Google Apps officially. Want some exotic features? Too bad. You won’t get them if Google don’t. Wasn’t that the point of CyanogenMod originally? Derp."
Yes, greed IS great!
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 21, 2013 13:27 UTC (Sat) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
There have been personality clashes, but I find Lesniak's post and the comments that follow quite misguided. Cyanogenmod is Steve Kondik's baby. Many are upset that he will make money off it and they won't, and that's because they are new to the idea of free software and are confusing free speech with free beer. RMS emphasised since the beginning that is ok to make money of free software -- Kondik is, and anyone else can too once they figure out how. Kondik promises it will remain open source. As a resolution to the dispute, he removed Lesniak's camera app from the tree. What more can one ask for? Kondik wants to enable Google Apps (including Play Store) on CM with Google's blessings. Lesniak says he will work towards distributing his app via the play store. Sounds like a win-win to me.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 21, 2013 14:29 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Kondik promises it will remain open source. and then he removed Lesniak's camera app from the tree because it can not be extended with closed-source modules. You don't see the contradiction? As tialaramex pointed out this starts looking like a half-truths: All the code will be open source (mumble "Except the stuff our engineers work on for this client that are actually paying"). Phones will be supported as long as people want to support them (mumble "Unless the manufacturer paying us says they need to deprecate the old model to drive sales"). In effect CyanogenMod starts looking like AOSP project—something you can grab and play with but not something you will install on your phone. And this raises the question: why do we need another AOSP project? We already have one. Note that it's not a rhetorical question: AOSP project is not perfect. There are definitely a place for a fork, but then we need honest answers for why this thing is needed and what can we do with it. Starting with half-truths is not a way to cultivate trust. Once more: this is not about confusing free speech with free beer. This is about honesty. People participate in Chromium or Eclipse projects even if they know highly profitable corporations (Google and IBM) will not share their wealth with them because they know from the start what they are getting and what they are not getting: you can get all the stuff in the FOSS parts (Chromium and Eclipse) while Google and IBM will use it as base for proprietary offerings (Chrome and IBM Rational). That's fine: everyone knows where everyone sits and what everyone does. With current CyanogenMod development nobody knows what features are planned for the “open source CyanogenMod” and “real CyanogenMod”. In particular it's not clear why “open source CyanogenMod” must remove useful features to pass the CTS, why it must remove good camera application without replacement in sight to placate manufacturers and so on.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 23, 2013 6:47 UTC (Mon) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
According to the google+ post Focal was removed because Lesniak was unwilling to allow them to re-license the code as non-gpl. It was not removed to pass some Google test. I give Lesniak thumbs up for standing up for the GPL.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 23, 2013 9:47 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] How are you reading these posts without seeing anything there? I was talking about save to external SD disappeared as well from the AOSP Camera app, because it breaks Google’s CTS part here. I'm not sure if it's true or not but, well, the more mystery with “disappearing features” the less promising the situation becomes.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 23, 2013 17:23 UTC (Mon) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
One piece I'm missing: How does saving to an external SD card break the CTS? Is it because not everything has an SD card (even though it still has /sdcard)?
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 23, 2013 22:34 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Perhaps there are test which verifies that when application try to access SD card they are accessing /sdcard and nothing else? I'm not CTS guru, I don't know, thus I trust Guillaume till further notice. Note that there are some discussion about return of this feature (Samsung is able to keep it and still pass the CTS, right?), thus perhaps not all hope for that particular feature is lost.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 24, 2013 17:10 UTC (Tue) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link] In particular it's not clear why “open source CyanogenMod” must remove useful features to pass the CTS, why it must remove good camera application without replacement in sight to placate manufacturers and so on.The second half of that sentence implies that focal was removed to placate manufacturers. That is what I responded to, focal was removed due to license, that may or may not be precipitated by manufacturers but it would be pure speculation to assign that blame without key input from the people involved on why they wanted to re-license focal. Now I could be rude like you and add insulting language about reading comprehension but I won't. I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth, only correct what I believed was an incorrect assignment of blame at the end of your post that is not supported by the known facts (that I'm aware of).
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 24, 2013 20:54 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] The second half of that sentence implies that focal was removed to placate manufacturers. Well, yeah. Guillaume said that quite explicitly: A future conversation with Steve Kondik will reveal that they might need to put hardware-specific enhancement for some camera devices, and that has to be hacked in the Camera app code. Putting these changes inside Camera apps instead of Hardware Abstraction Layers (HAL) could break other apps, which ironically kind of go against the goal of CTS (because then, only the “official” camera app will have those enhancements). Of course, those hardware enhancements are trade secrets, so they cannot be published back to CyanogenMod’s public repositories... It would be pure speculation to assign that blame without key input from the people involved on why they wanted to re-license focal. Sorry, but no. We discuss Google's deeds, Microsoft's deeds or any other company deeds without “key input from the people involved”, why Cyanogen, Inc should be any different? If “people involved” can only say Oh god please tell the story. grabs popcorn then I would use information given by other people as the best available. Guillaume's in this case. Yes, I know he's position is biased but he's the guy who knows the most about said story (among the ones who are willing to talk about it). I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth, only correct what I believed was an incorrect assignment of blame at the end of your post that is not supported by the known facts (that I'm aware of). We know for the fact that manufacturers already do such things (and introduce large security holes in the process) thus it's quite plausible that they want to continue to do that with Cyanogen also. And we know that one of the guys involved explicitly says that they wanted to change Focal by adding their proprietary closed-source “secret sauce” to it. What kind of facts do you need? Official letter from the manufacturers or large banners on a bunch of websites? Silence is damning enough in this case: if there are no such plans and Focal drama has some totally different reason then all Cyanogen needs to do is to say what really goes on, nothing more, nothing less.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 18, 2013 22:29 UTC (Wed) by atai (subscriber, #10977) [Link]
Maybe CyanogenMod will be forked in the future as people begin to dislike the commercial aspect of this company...
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 18, 2013 23:53 UTC (Wed) by augustz (subscriber, #37348) [Link]
Based on their described plans and the features they are adding to an open source product I actually hope they succeed.
I think there may be a spot for a commercial interest that is on the users side, not the carrier or manufacturing side.
Much of CM appears to be about listing to user desires, not shipping all the junk vendors do, and keeping even older phones fresher.
Time will tell on this one. Either people won't like what they offer, in which case another product will come out, or people will.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 19, 2013 6:43 UTC (Thu) by freddyh (subscriber, #21133) [Link]
I agree. I think some of the comments above are rather negative. Let's first give them a chance to prove themself, shall we?
Admittedly, there have been a lot of commercialisations of open source projects that haven't been in the best interest of their users. Then again, there are also projects that still do deliver good stuff even though they went commercial.
Time will tell on this one. I for one wouldn't mind spending bit of money on a decent alternative to stock Androids, especially if they keep up the promise of adding features to older phones.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 19, 2013 9:10 UTC (Thu) by Hanno (guest, #41730) [Link]
I really really like the idea of a commercial entity providing current software for abandoned hardware. Planned obsolescence is a real pain and I wish them best of luck to make money from devices other people would be throwing away otherwise.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 19, 2013 21:05 UTC (Thu) by bobdog1 (guest, #92071) [Link]
Cyanogenmod is the BEST THING EVER and raises old phones back from the nearly dead. Before I got my new phone I checked if it did Cyanogenmod -- port in progress, good enough for me!
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 19, 2013 7:23 UTC (Thu) by trey (subscriber, #37500) [Link]
s/CyanogenMod Inc./Cyanogen Inc./
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership Posted Sep 19, 2013 10:04 UTC (Thu) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
One issue that immediately springs to mind is the lack of separation of trademarks. Cyanogenmod, having been initially a community trademark (i.e. owned by the community, describing a community-driven project) is now owned by a company. That leaves the people who are contributing to Cyanogenmod-the-community-project and are not employed by Cyanogenmod Inc. in between.
Healthy Free Software projects have control over their trademarks, and are not dependent on a company to license the trademark usage (even if it may be under very liberal conditions).
I do understand the value of that trademark to the new company, since it communicates a certain degree of "I was here first", and "We're the primary GOTO guys". Still I think it's robbing the community of a valuable asset, and in the end is more beneficial to the company side than the community. This might well be one of the legal reasons to have it all set up under the hood initially.
In general, I think it's bad practice to take an established community trademark, and use that for a company. Now CM is not the only community having this trademark issue. Managing a trademark can be non-trivial, and seeing the trademark now belonging to a company, not a community is probably a function of the lack of maturity of the CM community in this regard. (Not blaming anybody, the majority of Free software projects do not have this sorted.)
Note that I don't want to accuse anyone of purposeful malpractice, but having seen this issue in different Free Software projects, and even having worked on resolving such a dispute, I think it's less than ideal and might form a problem for the flourishing of the community project and its existence, in case things go really bad. (Think CM getting sold to Oracle, or other such horrible things.)
Also, CM is not the only community (now) facing this issue, there are plenty of others, and all of them face this potential problem.
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership Posted Sep 19, 2013 10:59 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Healthy Free Software projects have control over their trademarks, and are not dependent on a company to license the trademark usage (even if it may be under very liberal conditions). Well, some of them do, but if you'll take couple of most vibrant communities (Eclipse plugins ecosystem and Firefox extensions), then they most definitely do “depend on a company to license the trademark usage”.
Practically speaking it's impossible for any one entity to badly control the trademark if there are vibrant community around trademarked product: if community will disagree with trademark holder it'll just leave it and create a new community nearby. Think Inkskape (it started as Sodypody) or Jenkins (it started Hudson). It's only a problem if you have weak and small community, but in such a case you have many other problems besides problems with trademarks. Think CM getting sold to Oracle, or other such horrible things. OpenOffice.org was sold to Oracle and LibreOffice does quite well, thank you very much.
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership Posted Sep 19, 2013 12:28 UTC (Thu) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
Yes, but Libreoffice (and Inkscape and Jenkins) had to re-brand, which is a burden on their side, due to the lack of control and ownership of the trademark.
Sure, it's doable, but trademarks bear value (some more than others) and replacing them comes at a cost. A company that truly cares about the community ecosystem it benefits from chooses the trademark wisely and doesn't steal it from the community.
Likewise, communities that would like to solve this problem can come up with clear rules under which the trademark may be used (a trademark license agreement). These things would mitigate the risk of having to change trademarks (and paying the costs in brand value and in changing the name everywhere).
Libreoffice is only in part relevant here. Yes, they had to change trademark, but they decided to fork. As much as we all love dissing Oracle, this particular case is not their fault (not directly, at least). Thank you, too. :-)
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership, so what? Posted Sep 19, 2013 16:35 UTC (Thu) by FranTaylor (guest, #80190) [Link]
"A company that truly cares about the community ecosystem it benefits from chooses the trademark wisely and doesn't steal it from the community."
This is pure meaningless gibberish. By their very nature trademarks are not "stolen from the community". Can you explain how this would happen? If a trademark is being "used by the community" then it is only because the owner has allowed them to do so.
"lack of control"
lack of control of what exactly? What sorts of control do the libreoffice people lack? How does the trademarkiness of their name affect their ability to make modifications to their product?
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership, here's why Posted Sep 19, 2013 17:15 UTC (Thu) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
There's a subtle difference between "that's meaningless gibberish" and "I don't understand what you mean". I believe what you wanted to say is the latter. Let's see why:
Communities can own trademarks (I know that, since I've been managing a community-owned trademark for a whole bunch of years). In fact, trademarks are quite often owned by a community, though most of them are not registered. In that situation, it is not uncommon, though a bad thing, that a company is created by a bunch of contributors, then uses this trademark. Companies are often a lot better at registering the trademark and defending it (since you can lose it if you don't). Most communities suck badly at this, since registering a trademark is a complicated process, and defending it involves boring legalities.
Now what's the problem: As long as the interests of the company and the community align well, and the company acts responsibly, probably not a lot. As soon as interests or policies diverge this might not be the case. In any case, it's a continuity problem, and in some cases it hampers independence. (Since the trademark allows a certain degree of control.)
So, "lack of control".
Note, first I'm not talking specifically about Libreoffice, it doesn't seem to be one of the problem cases. (I've noted that earlier.) I believe Libreoffice, or rather TDF owns the libreoffice trademark. That's a fine setup, in my experience.
Let's assume for the sake of my argument that Company X takes the trademark away from Community project Y (as is happening in the original story). Y is not aware of the risks, and after X has used the trademark for a while, they start owning it. Y didn't defend it against X (which is something you have to do to not lose it). Now the interests of X and Y diverge. That easily happens, the organisations have different raisons d'etre. Company X stands a much stronger case of winning this in court, and as such can tell Y, to a certain degree, what to do and threaten by removing the trademark license. Y gets to choose between doing what X wants, or having to rename everything, possibly hand over domains registered, loses all the brand and recognition value it has built up over the years, and loses a part of its own identity.
Another case (which I personally saw happening right in front of my eyes): Company X owns the trademark of community Y. Company Z comes in, wants to contribute and ship the product. Now Company X will be able to not grant a trademark license to Z, thereby making it really hard for Z to sell the product. That's not a leveled playing field, and probably not in the best interest of the community that creates the software.
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership, here's why Posted Sep 19, 2013 17:29 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"Communities can own trademarks"
I am not sure how. I think the only real way to effectively enforce this is via non-profit foundations. Do you have another method? Was CyanogenMod ever a community owned trademark whatever that means?
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership, here's why Posted Sep 20, 2013 10:05 UTC (Fri) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
There are two ways:
A) The trademark is not registered. If you ship software under a certain brand for a while, and nobody else already owns this trademark, it'll be yours. You'll have to make sure you keep it though. It can be hard to find for companies that are researching whether a trademark they want to register is already taken.
B) The trademark is registered. This is the safer way, but you need an organisation that registers the trademark for you, and you need to go through the whole process of registering it -- can easily take months, if not years. A non-profit organisation is I think the best option here. You'll still have to defend the trademark, but for others that want to register it, it will be harder, since you registered it, and it's more probably that this turns up when someone else wants to register it. (Usually, in that case, a trademark search is conducted, which should turn it up.)
You'll still have to defend it, in both cases.
Cyanogenmod has been around for a while, and is an established brand. That makes the Cyanogenmod makers own the trademark, which is the community. If the community were to defend it against Cyanogen Inc. now, they'd probably have a very good case. If they don't, their case will get weaker. I don't know if they ever registered it, but it doesn't seem so.
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership, here's why Posted Sep 20, 2013 11:11 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> That makes the Cyanogenmod makers own the trademark, which is the community.
umm, it it the 'community' that are the Cyanogenmod makers? or is it the developers who are writing the code and Cyanogen who has been doing the releases?
I would expect that the people doing the development are the ones who would count as the 'makers', and from what it sounds like, most of the significant developers are part of the new company. It sounds like they would be on very solid grounds to register the trademark that they have informally created.
That's if it's not as simple as Cyanogen being able to register it himself (similar to the way Linus finally got around to registering Linux, even though there had been thousands of people who had contributed code to Linux by the time he did so)
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership, here's why Posted Sep 20, 2013 13:07 UTC (Fri) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
It's very much about who does it, of course, yes.
The problem is the people falling between the cracks. I'm sure, with a project as big as Cyanogenmod, there's a difference between the people who have contributed to the project, and the people owning Cyanogen Inc..
The point is also the other way 'round: Can I trust to ship a product based on Cyanogenmod (and using its brand) while knowing that the trademark could be transferred into a company, which might not want me in the ecosystem. The conditions around the usage of the trademark change, that's why a trademark license (and a non-profit registering the trademark) is a good idea: it creates clarity and security for those who would like to get involved with the project.
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership, here's why Posted Sep 22, 2013 21:06 UTC (Sun) by Del- (guest, #72641) [Link]
Just want to extend my gratitude towards your contribution in this thread. I am fearful that too few of us see the dangers tearing open communities apart. Too many forces pull momentum away from the projects that has a chance to make a difference.
It should be obvious to anyone that the Openoffice trademark hurts TDF and Libreoffice big-time. As a long time Cyanogenmod user, I am deeply concerned. Concerned that this marks the end of my hope for Cyanogenmod evolving into a truly open Android based project. I see no hope or value in the project if it becomes yet another closed android version. We already have way too many of those. (too anybody wondering, open core just about equals proprietary/closed in my book)
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership, here's why Posted Sep 23, 2013 0:12 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> I see no hope or value in the project if it becomes yet another closed android version.
is there anything that's been published that indicates that this is going to happen, or is this just fear being expressed about what may happen in the future?
I had read that they were saying that Cyanogenmod was going to remain open-source. If they have said that it won't, please give a reference.
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership, here's why Posted Sep 23, 2013 0:28 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] is there anything that's been published that indicates that this is going to happen, or is this just fear being expressed about what may happen in the future? Well, he Del- explained it already: too anybody wondering, open core just about equals proprietary/closed in my book. And if the whole story with Focal is any indication “open core” is what we should expect. Granted, CyanogenMod was never fully open-source thus I'm not as skeptical as Del- but yes, it raises the question: what's the point. We already have one OS with plethora of binary-only “differentiators”—that's what you get when you buy Android handset in stores—thus I would like to know better what Cyanogen Inc. means when it talks about keeping CyanogenMod “open source.” If the end result will be yet-another-carriers-crippled-Android-distribution-with-botloads-of-crapware-preinstalled then why would anyone want that instead of something else?
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership, here's why Posted Sep 23, 2013 17:25 UTC (Mon) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
> open core just about equals proprietary/closed in my book
This is only really true when features that are in the closed portion are rejected from the open version when implemented independently (and otherwise acceptable). *That* is when it is time to fork from the main company's open version (we'll have to see about nginx as well now that nginx-plus exists).
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership, here's why Posted Sep 21, 2013 11:53 UTC (Sat) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link] Let's assume for the sake of my argument that Company X takes the trademark away from Community project Y (as is happening in the original story). Y is not aware of the risks, and after X has used the trademark for a while, they start owning it. Y didn't defend it against X (which is something you have to do to not lose it). Now the interests of X and Y diverge. That easily happens, the organisations have different raisons d'etre. Company X stands a much stronger case of winning this in court, and as such can tell Y, to a certain degree, what to do and threaten by removing the trademark license. Legally, this isn't possible (yes I know it happens). But it's pretty easy to stop IF you're aware of the trap. Make sure your project always says "project (tm)". You're staking your claim. When company X comes along and says "you're abusing our trademark", project Y simply responds "hey, you were founded and registered the trademark in 2013. Here's proof "project (tm)" was using the trademark in 2010. Go whistle." And in any sane legal jurisdiction (like here in the UK) Company X will almost certainly end up paying your lawyers bill for you. Cheers,
Cyanogenmod trademark ownership, here's why Posted Sep 21, 2013 19:22 UTC (Sat) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
Yes, exactly. But you need to be aware of these things, they're subtle, easy to forget, even easier to ignore and not exactly squarely within hackers' expertise.
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 19, 2013 10:56 UTC (Thu) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]
Does this mean I would have likely have to pay to use CM in the future?
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 19, 2013 13:11 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
No. Read the ama
CyanogenMod Inc. Posted Sep 19, 2013 19:37 UTC (Thu) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051) [Link]
Me = completely ignorant of this, so I'll ask:
* Will this mean contributors must sign over copyrights?
and, a "softer" question set:
* Why care that much if Cyanogen, Inc. becomes Evil? What's the worst they could do? Force users to choose from another of the dozen or so AOSP-based ROMs? Partner with Verizon to make a better custom ROM for their phones?
Cheers.
Cyanogen Inc. Posted Sep 20, 2013 17:27 UTC (Fri) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
Ouch. This could be very good or very bad.
It's very very hard to commercialize an existing community. Suddenly a company will take credit for all the code you thought you gave to the community. I'm afraid the involved parties doesn't fully appreciate just how hard it is. It may be easier to establish a commercial player _within_ the community, which is also what the larger Linux players did (there is no Linux, inc.).
That's not even taking into consideration their business model, since one does not seem to be in place yet. The longer you wait with establishing that, the bigger the chances that it'll be really desperate.
Cyanogen Inc. Posted Sep 21, 2013 11:38 UTC (Sat) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
The lack of business model is a particular concern.
If you have a model, and everybody's happy that the model could work and isn't evil then you can hold your head high and say "We're not evil". And some people may be happy to continue to develop code and give it away knowing you'll use it, even though you'll make money and they won't. Because hey, you're not evil and why shouldn't people make money? This is more or less what happens any time you donate a patch to a component that is largely or entirely developed by engineers at a commercial Linux distro and it's fine.
If the model doesn't work (e.g. loses too much money), you have the option to say "Too bad" and walk away, that's one of the nice things about limited liability corporations. Nobody got hurt, all the free stuff is still free.
But if you don't have a model but you're saying "We're not evil" then you're under pressure to define any business opportunity that does come along as not evil more or less regardless of what it is. It may be tempting to tell a few half-truths. All the code will be open source (mumble "Except the stuff our engineers work on for this client that are actually paying"). Phones will be supported as long as people want to support them (mumble "Unless the manufacturer paying us says they need to deprecate the old model to drive sales").
It might be fine. But the risk worries me.
Cyanogen Inc. Posted Sep 25, 2013 10:48 UTC (Wed) by etienne (subscriber, #25256) [Link]
> little information on what the business model will be
It would be cheaper to buy separately the hardware and the software of a smart phone (look at those cheap China phones with powerful processors), and I think I would buy (few) major updates of software if minor updates and security fixes were free, instead of buying a complete new phone.
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