# What Is Cyanogen? Don't Laugh Please.



## uat (Oct 25, 2011)

Please don't laugh at my ignorant... I know what Cyanogen is... but is it a start-up company, a dev community, a group of enthusiastic unpaid developers from all over the world, or what is it? Do they recruit or hire or something...

Cyanogen firmware presence is everywhere. Now Kindle Fire's owners are talking about CM in their device... I am wondering how many resources it has to do all these firmware mods on so many devices.

I ask because I am so amazed by their capability and especially being able to work on so many devices, if l they all are unpaid developers and have a full-time job somewhere how they keep up with all these mods? Huge thanks to them, all my devices are running CM firmware...


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## rposa (Aug 23, 2011)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyanogenMod


*CyanogenMod* is an after-market replacement for the firmware of over sixty cell phones and Internet tablets. Based on the Android mobile computer operating system, it offers features and options not found in the official firmware distributed by vendors of these devices.
Features supported by CyanogenMod include native theming support (also known as the "T-Mobile Theme Engine"), a codec for the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), a large Access Point Name list, an OpenVPN client, a reboot menu, support for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and USB tethering, CPU overclocking, soft buttons and other "tablet tweaks", toggles in the notification pull-down (such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS), as well as other interface enhancements. CyanogenMod is also stated to increase performance and reliability compared with official firmware releases.[sup][2][/sup]
CyanogenMod is developed as free and open source software based on the official releases of Android by Google, Inc. together with original and third-party code.
Although only a subset of total CyanogenMod users elect to report their use of the firmware,[sup][3][/sup] as of 27 October 2011, CyanogenMod has recorded over 750,000 active installs on a multitude of devices.[sup][4][/sup]

* History and development*

Shortly following the introduction of the HTC Dream (known as the "T-Mobile G1" in the United States) mobile phone in September 2008, a method was discovered to attain privileged control (known as "root access") within Android's Linux-based subsystem.[sup][5][/sup] Having root access, combined with the open source nature of the Android operating system, allowed the phone's stock firmware to be modified and re-installed onto the phone.
In the following year, several modified firmwares for the Dream were developed and distributed by Android enthusiasts. One, maintained by a developer named JesusFreke, quickly became popular among Dream owners. In August, 2009, JesusFreke stopped work on his firmware, and suggested users switch to a version of his rom that had been further enhanced by developer Cyanogen (Steve Kondik) called "CyanogenMod".[sup][6][/sup]
CyanogenMod quickly grew in popularity, and a small community of developers, known as the CyanogenMod Team (and informally as "Team Douche"), made contributions. Within a few months, the number of devices and features supported by CyanogenMod blossomed and CyanogenMod quickly became one of the more popular Android firmware distributions.


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## Jotokun (Sep 24, 2011)

uat said:


> Please don't laugh at my ignorant... I know what Cyanogen is... but is it a start-up company, a dev community, a group of enthusiastic unpaid developers from all over the world, or what is it? Do they recruit or hire or something...
> 
> Cyanogen firmware presence is everywhere. Now Kindle Fire's owners are talking about CM in their device... I am wondering how many resources it has to do all these firmware mods on so many devices.
> 
> I ask because I am so amazed by their capability and especially being able to work on so many devices, if all they are all unpaid developers and have a full-time job somewhere how they keep up with all these mods? Huge thanks to them, all my devices are running CM firmware...


Cyanogenmod is a community effort. Its not just one group of people doing every device, but rather a bunch of smaller teams that cover devices on a volunteer basis. For example, the team that does the Touchpad port also handled the Nook Color port, but doesnt work on the Atrix or Droid ports. Its not a primary job, just something done on the side with no compensation because they want to do that. Anyone who wants to contribute is free to do so, nobody is "hired" or otherwise recruited.


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## R1Lover (Oct 23, 2011)

thread cleaned.... let's keep this informative please.


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