Samsung Hires Steve 'Cyanogen' Kondik

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:Ack!

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

I'm going to cautiously take this as a Good Thing(tm). Samsung makes decent enough hardware, equipped with awe-UNinspiring software, so they could certainly use the help. While we might be looking at the end of his involvement in Cyanogen, we could be looking at the beginning of the first real Android fork/distro. Meanwhile, had he let Google hire him, we never would have heard of him again - he'd have disappeared into Google's Android development team.

Just another move on the board

[Lifyre]

This is just another move on the chess board. Google bought Motorola which will invariably give Motorola the inside track on Android to some extent. Samsung realized that while their hardware has been quite good their software has been severely lacking in both quality and updates. This hire makes perfect sense, it allows them to produce higher quality software (the goal being to improve upon Google's not just dress it up pretty) with a better update policy. If they actually allow their software to be run like CM has been (and force it through the providers) then it puts LG and HTC in poor positions long term.