Samsung Hires Steve 'Cyanogen' Kondik 177
Some nameless reader noted a surprising twist in the tale of Cyanogen, an android modder once cease and desisted by Google. "Samsung Mobile has hired one of the homebrew market's most notorious and successful Android hackers, Steve 'Cyanogen' Kondik, best known as the creator of the CyanogenMod for Android."
Re:Why couldnt you (Score:4, Informative)
Re:As surprising as security firms employ "cracker (Score:4, Informative)
Cracker? Hacker?
Do you have an idea on what CyanogenMod [cyanogenmod.com] actually is?
Re:Just like MS (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think Steve Kondik is the type that would stop supporting what he started. Plus there are a bunch of other devs that also work on it. Samsung gave 5 of the CyanogenMod devs free Galaxy S2 phones and only asked that they make CyanogenMod work on it. Hiring Steve may allow for Samsung to ship their phones already running CyanogenMod. That gives them 1up on other vendors, hardware that officially supports CyanogenMod.
Cyanogen IS Android if you are a geek (Score:5, Informative)
I own a lowly HTC Desire, unlocked and rooted, and I've used it with the stock HTC Sense as well as many other custom firmwares. I have also seen HTC Sense, Motorola Blur and stock Android on other phones
Cyanogen is by far the most advanced of all. If you really are interested in unlocking your phone's true potential, it's the only choice. My HTC Desire running Cyanogen is about twice faster than when running Sense, both in benchmarks and real world use. Maybe if HTC were to update their OS to 2.3.5 like Cyanogen, the performance differences would be reduced, but that hasn't happened yet AFAIK.
As the article states, tethering is enabled by default. And it also allows the user to select per app permissions, something even the stock Android will not do. And if you're adventurous, running the Nightlies guarantees the latest technology. It's actually not as dangerous as it sounds, because in almost 100 Nightlies only 2 or 3 were duds and restoring from backups took 15 minutes.
Whichever phone I purchase next, the main requirement is that Cyanogen supports it. For me it's even more important than camera resolution, screen size or storage space. I mean with a fast SD card and a few tweaks I can fit 100 apps on my HTC Desire.
Re:Cease and Decist = Resume Bonus? (Score:4, Informative)
Google didn't tell him to stop "hacking its products". They asked him to stop distributing their proprietary Google applications (gmail, etc), because he wasn't authorized to do so.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
As I understand it the C&D wasn't for modifying Android, it was for bundling the Google Apps in with the modified Android. (You can still get them with Cyanogenmod, but now they're a separate download.)