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Ars Technica reports that Cyanogen Inc. reportedly fires OS development arm, switches to apps:
Cyanogen Inc. seems to be in trouble. A report from Android Police cites "several sources" that say the three-year-old Android software house will be laying off 20 percent of its workforce. One source said the company would "pivot" to "apps" and away from OS development.
"Cyanogen" branding can be confusing, so here's a quick glossary before we get started:
- Cyanogen—A person. Steve Kondik. The guy that originally started CyanogenMod.
- CyanogenMod—A free, open source, OS heavily based on Android and compatible with hundreds of devices. Anyone can download and flash the OS to a compatible device.
- Cyanogen OS—A for-profit OS that OEMs can purchase and ship on devices. It's the CyanogenMod codebase with some proprietary features on top and update support from Cyanogen Inc.
- Cyanogen Inc.—A for-profit company that aims to sell Cyanogen OS to OEMs. Formed with key members from the open-source project.
- Cyanogen Mods—Cyanogen Inc.'s proprietary app platform for Cyanogen OS.
The Android Police report says "roughly 30 out of the 136 people Cyanogen Inc. employs" are being cut, and that the layoffs "most heavily impact the open source arm" of the company. Android Police goes on to say that CyanogenMod development by Cyanogen Inc "may be eliminated entirely." The community could continue to develop CyanogenMod, but it seems many of the core CyanogenMod developers at the company will no longer be paid to work on CyanogenMod.
The story reports that, after a long executive retreat for Cyanogen Inc.'s company leaders, layoffs were conducted without advance notice.Imagine coming in to work to discover that a generic human resources meeting had been added to your schedule the night before — and in the meeting find out your were being laid off.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @12:20PM
“Won't programmers starve?”
I could answer that nobody is forced to be a programmer. Most of us cannot manage to get any money for standing on the street and making faces. But we are not, as a result, condemned to spend our lives standing on the street making faces, and starving. We do something else.
But that is the wrong answer because it accepts the questioner's implicit assumption: that without ownership of software, programmers cannot possibly be paid a cent. Supposedly it is all or nothing.
The real reason programmers will not starve is that it will still be possible for them to get paid for programming; just not paid as much as now.
Restricting copying is not the only basis for business in software. It is the most common basis(7) because it brings in the most money. If it were prohibited, or rejected by the customer, software business would move to other bases of organization which are now used less often. There are always numerous ways to organize any kind of business.
Probably programming will not be as lucrative on the new basis as it is now. But that is not an argument against the change. It is not considered an injustice that sales clerks make the salaries that they now do. If programmers made the same, that would not be an injustice either. (In practice they would still make considerably more than that.)
Accept less than shit pay, coders, because you're not worth shit. Your free software movement made you worthless.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @12:40PM
Not just that. A new phone with last year's premium specs is less than $200. That, combined with the always moving Linux device driver model which makes it almost certain that a driver module compiled for one version of the kernel will not work with another version, have made it more acceptable to just buy a new phone when you want a software update rather than keeping an old phone and CyanogenModding it.
There just isn't a compelling reason to buy a (non-i)phone and keep it updated forever. When Android support is dropped, just sell and buy next year's model.