Founder Cyanogen may want to fork CM through crowdfunding

CyanogenMod custom rom developer and Cyanogen Inc co-founder Steve Kondik suggests he plans to fork out CyanogenMod next year and fund it through a crowdfunding campaign. It looks like he is going to leave or has left Cyanogen.

Kondik probably hopes that developers will join his new initiative, which he wants to house in a non-profit organization, Android Police writes on the basis of a private Google+ post. Continuing with CyanogenMod is tricky because Cyanogen Inc owns several of the rights to the custom rom, including the brand name.

The founder of the custom rom writes that with Cyanogen Inc, he “messed up” and that he is “tricked”. On Tuesday, it was rumored that he had been sidetracked and that Cyanogen will close its headquarters. Kondik doesn’t confirm that directly, but it appears from his words that that information is correct.

Kondik blames the poor state of the company on Kirt McMaster, the current president and co-founder. Cyanogen Inc got off to a promising start with a software development deal for the OnePlus One in 2014, but the companies got into an argument and OnePlus formed its own development team. In recent years, Cyanogen has made software for smartphones from the British Wileyfox, among other things. CyanogenMod is a custom rom that users can flash onto a device after purchase.