29 replies to this topic

[saklas]

Article from Phandroid
http://goo.gl/Zodws

first things first;
Congratz Cyanogen!

next...
i'm not sure if i should be happy or worried.

[AGlider]

First. I really dislike the "buys" wording. Really.
Second. It makes sense for a mobile company to hire a 1st class developer/integrator.
Third. Maybe Samsung will sell better products :-) Much better.

Go Steve, go!

[roman]

What will this mean for CM? Will it slow down the project?

[s4t1sfy]

Congratulations to cyanogen!!!

I think the "buy" part is inspired by the soccer world. Just to catch your eyes here.

now the most important part. cyanogen is the prime developer of CM. I really hope CM won't be affected... My Vision runs so well on CM7!

[bassmadrigal]

This is what I posted on xda.

Quote

Yes, definitely a major congrats. However, I don't think this will have too much impact on CM. Steve Kondik (aka Cyanogen) has been able to keep development going with CM as a side project since it started. He has held a full-time job (afaik) the whole time CM has been in development. So, he is definitely able to manage his time.

But even if this new job prevents him from working with CM (and I really hope Samsung wouldn't put him in that position), there are enough others in the primary CM dev team that development would still continue. Gotta love the beauty of open source.

[halorin]

I can't imagine Samsung said 'We hired you in recognition of your talent in making Android a better experience. Work for us, but continue to develop a ROM on the side that all of our competitors indirectly benefit from by having their phones made better thanks to your software for free, the same thing we're hiring you to do for us via compensation'.

CyanogenMod as we know it changes with this news.

[z0phi3l]

halorin, on 16 August 2011 - 01:26 PM, said:

I can't imagine Samsung said 'We hired you in recognition of your talent in making Android a better experience. Work for us, but continue to develop a ROM on the side that all of our competitors indirectly benefit from by having their phones made better thanks to your software for free, the same thing we're hiring you to do for us via compensation'.

CyanogenMod as we know it changes with this news.

I doubt Steve would have accepted any offer that prevented him from continuing his work on CM, it doesn't make an sense for Steve to agree to something like that

[halorin]

z0phi3l, on 16 August 2011 - 02:59 PM, said:

I doubt Steve would have accepted any offer that prevented him from continuing his work on CM, it doesn't make an sense for Steve to agree to something like that

I don't say that to question Steve's integrity or anything along those lines. I just know if I were Samsung and I wanted to recruit a great Android developer, I'd want them to work for me exclusively. I can't imagine any business would hire someone who was sharing their work via open source so they could develop their own proprietary software, but still let the results of his work float around in an open source environment.

It's not like he won't know how something awesome he helps Samsung make and then be able to add that to CyanogenMod. He may not be able to use the same code, but he's the guy making the code, so it's not like he couldn't duplicate it in another way. But then that begs the question of would he want to bother with that, which would also slow CM production.

z0phi3l, on 16 August 2011 - 02:59 PM, said:

I doubt Steve would have accepted any offer that prevented him from continuing his work on CM, it doesn't make an sense for Steve to agree to something like that

Apparently you have no idea the power of large amounts of money. It's not like Samsung hired him for $80k/year. You also clearly have no idea what Non Disclosure Agreements is. I'm guessing you've also never seen a basic employment contract that any large corporation uses, that usually includes anything you create related to your job, while working for them belongs to them as intellectual property, even if it's "afterhours" or "side work"

It's possible that didn't happen, but not likely. All that negativity aside, congrats Steve - you made it to the big time!

Edited by 「gu1dry」, 16 August 2011 - 11:16 PM.

[saklas]

darn~ the msg above came out with all the css stuff~ no idea why it happened.
can a mod help me to delete it? [i can't edit to clean it up too]

follow up story from androidguys
http://goo.gl/fpfAU

[halorin]

hellion, on 16 August 2011 - 03:37 PM, said:

Apparently you have no idea the power of large amounts of money. It's not like Samsung hired him for $80k/year. You also clearly have no idea what Non Disclosure Agreements is. I'm guessing you've also never seen a basic employment contract that any large corporation uses, that usually includes anything you create related to your job, while working for them belongs to them as intellectual property, even if it's "afterhours" or "side work"

It's possible that didn't happen, but not likely. All that negativity aside, congrats Steve - you made it to the big time!

/agree.

I can't imagine Samsung hired Steve so TouchWiz/Samsung ROM elements went open source. I'm pretty sure they hired him so CyanogenMod ROM elements went closed source.

[Epidemike]

I am so definately not going to be usuing Android as my platform of choice fro my mobile device because of this news. I agree with Halorin's last post about Samsung closing CM source. Call me a pessimist but I dont think it bodes well for the community at the moment.

I've been on the edge of going to a WP7 device but I want to make sure that the Nokia handset is available in the US first. The main reason has been all of the recent security issues with Android, this news just is the straw that broke the camel's back.

[FatherStorm]

Epidemike, on 16 August 2011 - 07:10 PM, said:

I am so definately not going to be usuing Android as my platform of choice fro my mobile device because of this news. I agree with Halorin's last post about Samsung closing CM source. Call me a pessimist but I dont think it bodes well for the community at the moment.

I've been on the edge of going to a WP7 device but I want to make sure that the Nokia handset is available in the US first. The main reason has been all of the recent security issues with Android, this news just is the straw that broke the camel's back.

so your position is that since a single developer has decided to take a job at a major manufacturer where there's at least *some* chance of him influencing optimizations to their proprietary ROM, you would rather forgo the whole open OS and embrace a 100% fully, unabashedly and eternally closed OS. Let's keep in mind that Samsung can't just "close" CM development, that horse is out of the barn in the open-source pasture already. That's like Apple hiring Tim Berners-Lee so they can "close-source" the internet.

[masterdarko]

CM is not Steve's life, it's a passionate hobby. He has a life of his own and afterall someone has got to earn the money. I highly doubt cyanogenmod gives him a reliable source of income.

Incredible S

[fett]

And a voice from the back of the room shouts, "free Samsungs, on the House!!!"

[zoidbot]

Epidemike, on 16 August 2011 - 07:10 PM, said:

I've been on the edge of going to a WP7 device

Really?  I mean have you actually seen how bad WP7 and Wp7.5 devices are?  It's like a bad iPhone from 2008 and Android 1.5, and the app-store is a total joke.  Android got a hard time when it had "only" 80,000 apps, WP7 doesn't have even a quarter of that, and the fart-app to proper app ratio is very high...

[bassmadrigal]

OK, it sounds like Steve won't be an active developer with CyanogenMod as much, but he will still oversee it and perform a leadership role.

Quote

...it's a job and I'm glad that I can use what I learned from all this to do something cool in the real world I'll still be doing code review and some leadership for CM, but I'll be keeping it legit like always...I think we really broke away from the modding community. Most of us are professional engineers or in the field some way or another.

SOURCE: http://www.androidgu...le-cyanogenmod/

And @Epidermike, you do realize that there are other devs on the CyanogenMod team other than Steve, right? Most of the code doesn't come from Steve, it comes from many different developers, and Steve (along with the other "main" CM devs) reviews the code before merging it into the main tree.

Even if Steve were to never work on this again, the work would still progress, and I doubt most CM users would ever know the difference. Steve started the snowball, but it is now running on its own, and one man getting a prominent job at a handset manufacturer is not going to stop it. I LOVE open source.   (I always wondered if I would ever have a need for that smily. I guess I do)

[saklas]

in all things positive; developers might get Samsung phones ahead of launches.
Samsung could become a preferred phone provider then.

we all know that Opinion Leaders will influence how the mass market will take up a product.

if Cyanogen is seeing this, will be great if he drop a comment as well

and other wonderful CM Team! Go Go Go! we'll support you as always.

[ciwrl]

Just to clarify some rumors here. This will have no affect on CM in a negative way. Steve accepted this position with the explicit caveat that he be allowed to continue work on CM both in a leadership and developer capacity. The quote above where Steve says, "I'll keep it legit as always" is meant to reference possible early leaks of Samsung software/IP. CM prides itself on being the first legal ROM distribution, and that standard is reflected in our professional lives as well. We are drawing a distinct line here, between his professional life, and CM life.

To those that read too much into this, no this does NOT mean a CM-phone, though that is still a goal for the team. This also does not mean TouchWiz is dead, or CM-ified. This does mean Steve gains more knowledge and gets to flex his already substantial expertise.

Also, please don't spam him with FB friend requests; use twitter or Google+ if you want to follow him.

[TeckniX]

A little late in the notifications, but congrats Cyanogen - Goes to show that some hard work and hacks go a long way!

[bassmadrigal]

Thanks for the clarification ciwrl!