Open source is a wonderful concept, where coders across the world can pitch in to improve and upgrade other people’s attempts at fixing a problem.
Such was the case with Cyanogen, which has just established itself as a company after raising £4.3m in investment.
Its operating system CyanogenMod (CM) lets Android device users swap Google’s OS for CM, a modded version of Android which gives users more control over their devices.
Using the mod lets users clean out unwanted apps and programmes installed by the manufacturer and mobile operator, and gives users access to apps generated by Cyanogen.
It’s in use on more than 7m Android devices, Cyanogen claims, despite being starting out as a hobby project, which is pretty good going by any standards.
What remains to be seen is whether open source suffers when you effectively cut out crowdsourcing upgrades and improvements to focus on a core team by forming a company, as Cyanogen has now done.
CTO Steve Kronik says "our community is our biggest asset" – it’ll be interesting to see whether the company helps the coders work faster and more efficiently, or whether it drives the product in a different direction entirely.
