i think this is pretty bad news for cyanogenmod. the real reason so many people install cyanogenmod is that its generally the best near stock android ROM on a lot of devices because all the good low level hackery type people who can hack the firmware and do stuff like make ICS run on a phone before samsung release it 'work' voluntarily for cyanogenmod as a hobby.
like on the SGS2, there were AOSP roms too, but I used cyanogen because they seemed to be the hackers who new what they were doing best, not because of any changes cyanogenmod made to AOSP.
their actual modifications to AOSP are very minor, and don't really indicate any kind of ability at large scale software engineering or UX design, just making small changes to the AOSP launcher and stuff. most of the good work they did was behind the scenes stuff to make some obscure audio chip's firmware run on ICS or whatever.
make it into a company and you lose all those hackers who were doing it as a hobby, and they move onto AOKP or something, and what is left?
plus their statements are super contradictory (although I don't really see what they are talking about with the cash register thing):
"The mobile devices out there, theyre just not meant for anybody to use," Kondik says. "Theyre essentially mobile cash registers. We want to help you get stuff done, and use these things to their fullest potential."
The company plans to keep its firmware free. So how will it become profitable? McMaster and Kondik say they have many ideas for generating revenue, but declined to discuss them in depth. "If youre the default OS on a device and you have 50 million users, there are a lot of ways to make money," McMaster says. "Its not just about building a user base. Its about building great services you cant get anywhere else."
