Android-x86 Accuses Console OS of Scamming — What Happened

Does forking code come at a Price?

We may earn a commission for purchases made using our links.

A storm has been brewing in the Android-x86 developer community. The CEO of crowdfunded project ‘Console OS’ has been accused of scamming his Kickstarter backers by failing to deliver on his promises. Thanks to popular threads on social media sites such as reddit, the storm grew into a full-blown drama hurricane.

But who are the parties involved, what happened, and how does this fall into place in the wider world of open-source development? I delved into the many posts made over this issue, both past and present, to bring you a comprehensive overview of what happened between Console OS and Android-x86.

Who are the Players?

Time-line of Relevant Events

Note: there are many smaller events which play a part in each party’s grievances, however, they pale in comparison to the events listed below.

June 12, 2014: Console OS was announced on Kickstarter.

~June-August, 2014: Christopher Price, and all discussion of Console OS, is banned from the Android-x86 discussion board. The group’s reason for the ban is that they quickly determined the project to be a scam after speaking with Price.

August 11, 2014: Console OS Kickstarter ended.

~January 2015: Intel halts support for Android-IA, dropping both support for Core and PC tablets.

December 11, 2015: Chih-Wei Huang publicly calls out Christopher Price and Console OS, stating that Price is scamming his Kickstarter backers by failing to deliver on his promises.

December 25, 2015: The backlash begins to bubble as several outlets and developers begin covering the issue. It goes viral when the story is posted to the Android subreddit. That same day, Christopher Price posts an update on the Console OS Kickstarter page responding to the criticism.

December 31, 2015: In response to the accusations levied at Chih-Wei Huang in the Kickstarter update, Chih-Wei Huang challenges Christopher Price to produce at least 10% of the features he promised, and offers him $50,000 to do so by the New Year. Christopher Price responds, but does not take Mr. Huang up on the challenge, stating that the Android-IA mailing list is not the proper place to do so.

What are the grievances?

Chih-Wei Huang -> Christopher Price/Console OS:

Accuses Price of cheating his backers by not fulfilling his Kickstarter promises.

States that Christopher Price haven’t written a single piece of original code for Console OS, and that Console OS doesn’t really exist.

States that the existence of Console OS hurts the reputation of Android-x86, as anyone reading the git log of iConsole will see that “cwhuang” is the biggest contributor to the project. If he tacitly consents, he may be “treated as an accomplice in [a court of law].”

States that in their numerous attempts at correspondence (even once in person), Price has rebuked his requests to demo Console OS.

Christopher Price -> Chih-Wei Huang:

Claims Chih-Wei Huang is attempting to “shakedown” Price by demanding he pay $50,000 in order to pull code from the Android-x86 project. For evidence, he put up an e-mail conversation he had with Mr. Huang. As Chih-Wei Huang is the lead administrator of the Android-x86 project, he is responsible for managing pull requests.

States that it is unreasonable for Mr. Huang to demand a donation to pull from Android-x86, calling it “unfortunate” and a “disgrace to open-source.” He points out that Mr. Huang is an ASUS employee, and believes that it is unprofessional of an employee to make this request.

States that Chih-Wei Huang has been overly critical of Intel and Console OS.

Christopher Price/Console OS -> Android-IA

Disappointed that Intel dropped support for Android-IA, as Console OS relied heavily on Android-IA to get Android properly working on newer Intel hardware.

Community -> Christopher Price/Console OS

Believes that Console OS is but one string in a long line of failed projects, from Mechaworks, iConsoleTV, and now Console OS/iConsole Micro. Major issues with the project stemming from a lack of honesty about where the project would pull its sources from.

Worried that Android-x86 would be scapegoated for the lack of fulfilled promises made by Price.

There are accusations that Price put up a Kickstarter campaign while knowing that Android-IA support would not last.

Examining the Grievances

Clearly, there are many, many claims being thrown around. We’ll examine each to let you decide the truth behind the matter. Note that many of these links are based on comments sections on various blogs and articles. The discussion on this topic has been heavily fractured and thus hard to follow.

Against Christopher Price/Console OS

Against Chih-Wei Huang

Is Mr. Huang guilty of shaking down Price for money? According to the e-mail conversation posted by Price, the exact wording used by Mr. Huang was to “donate” to “android-x86.org.” According to Mr. Huang, the $50,000 demand was an attempt at testing Price to see if he could show “something real” this time. Mr. Huang demands a video demo of Console OS or code uploaded to Github. Does Mr. Huang have trouble working with Android-IA? You can read the relevant accusations levied against him here. Mr. Huang has since responded to these claims in the Android-x86 Google Group.

Where does this fit in the bigger picture?

Such a scenario is not at all unfamiliar to the open-source world. A similar debacle happened back in 2005 between CherryOS and PearPC. Popular open-source rendering program Blender has faced many attempts at forking its code-base for profit without seeing many improvements submitted upstream. A more recent, and relevant example, involves Menuet OS and its fork Kolibri OS. Christopher Price claims that his fork is nothing at all like these previous examples. In a blog post, he likens Console OS to that of Boxee, CyanogenMod, and Apple’s WebKit.

Price promises to resume development in 2016, claims to be offering rewards for any contributors to his open-source project, and states that he will ship all remaining perks to his backers. On the other hand, Chih-Wei Huang has moved to stop development of Lollipop-x86 entirely and move to the Marshmallow-x86 branch in order to “disillusion the scam quicker.”

We’ve laid out the background, accusations, and evidence to hopefully give you a comprehensive overview of the controversy surrounding Console OS. We hope that you view this as a reminder to critically examine claims made for crowd-funded projects before investing your money into it. Moving forward, we will have to wait and see if the Console OS team will be able to produce any code worth some merit. Until then, the Android community has lost faith in the project given the revelations made by the Android-x86 team.

Where do you stand on this issue? Let us know in the comments below.

Update: Chris Price has since replied to several of the comments on r/Android regarding this article, find them here