Hyperbolic as that may seem, and perhaps a little too personal for a tech blog, it's the truth. Seven years ago this Christmas a workplace accident rendered my right hand mostly useless. I couldn't type, painkillers kept me in bed most of the day, and I had two different doctors telling me surgery was unlikely to restore enough of my hand that I'd be able to do just about all of the things I enjoyed doing. I was in a seriously dark place, and when I wasn't trying to figure out how let my family cheer me up I was lurking in public CyanogenMod IRC channel just to keep my mind busy. I was able to watch as the CyanogenMod team grew from a small public chat with a handful of clever ideas into a global community. The time I spent watching as all of these remarkable people used every minute of their free time worked together to build ways for their phones to do new and amazing things not only encouraged me to push myself to find ways to contribute, it gave me a unique perspective. I was able to watch as the CyanogenMod team grew from a small public chat with a handful of clever ideas into a global community. Verizon is offering the Pixel 4a for just $10/mo on new Unlimited lines Unfortunately that means I was also there to watch as the software company that grew from this community quickly burned to the ground and pissed off a fair percentage of that loyal community. What excites me now with the recently announced Lineage OS climbing out from the CyanogenMod ashes has a lot to do with what excited me about CM from the beginning, and that's what happens when clever people openly talk about what is possible with their spare time. Back before anyone knew better

My adventures with CyanogenMod didn't start until the Nexus One, but only because I really needed my HTC G1 to be as stable as possible. I bought a G1 the day it was released because it had a Linux Terminal, and that meant I could remotely access my work servers and troubleshoot customer needs without carrying my laptop around everywhere. I worked for a small web hosting company and it was important that I always be ready to answer a support call when I wasn't in the office. I was aware of the existence of CyanogenMod as a potential alternative, but didn't really bother with it. Most people didn't hear about CyanogenMod until Google tried to shut the project down. A Cease And Desist letter from Google left the team thinking the project was completely dead, because Google didn't want the proprietary parts of the OS included in these community builds. You could build Android and do whatever you wanted to it, but Google's apps needed to be separate. The way around this quickly became installing the core OS built by CyanogenMod and then finding GApps elsewhere and installing that on top, but a surefire way to bring the Internet's attention to something is to tell them they can't have it. With a spotlight on the project, it grew quickly. If you bought something and weren't able to alter it to work the way you wanted it to, you didn't own it. The Nexus One was different for me. It was a gift after my accident, so I didn't need it for work. This was mine to play with, so I started looking for the best resources to learn how to tinker. Most resources at the time pointed me to the XDA forums, but I found myself drawn to the real-time communication of the CyanogenMod IRC. In these relatively early days, the public channel existed as general communication and support. People would drop in, ask a question, and there was usually enough people around to lend a hand with whatever problem they were having. At this point, there was never more than 150 people active and the general conversation was geared toward sharing ideal and working through issues found when implementing new ideas. Watching the channel over a period of months was great for me. The Nexus One was much easier for people to tinker with, which added to the rapidly growing popularity of the project. I was able to watch other people ask the questions I had, since typing with one hand took me forever, and before long I was able to offer help to those that had come in with common questions. This quickly became a social outlet for me. I made friends in the channel, and we all knew roughly when each other would be online. For someone less skilled like me, this meant I could make sure I was around when Cyanogen and Koush and others were around so I could learn from them as they worked out new ways to implement their ideas.

The group thought was if you bought something and weren't able to alter it to work the way you wanted, you didn't own it.

At this point, the purpose of CyanogenMod was entirely personal. The group thought was if you bought something and weren't able to alter it to work the way you wanted it to work, you didn't own it. For some people this meant ways to enable tethering in a time when the OS itself didn't offer the feature. For others, this meant tweaking the underlying hardware to maximize battery life. All of these ideas came together, and the stuff that worked got added into the next build. That next build would be announced on XDA, and shortly after small burst of new users would come into the IRC to ask for help or talk about a new way to implement a feature. Rinse, build, repeat. Expansion and Monetization

As much fun as the Nexus One group was, things didn't really take off for Android as a whole until Motorola and Verizon released the original Droid. Verizon's marketing budget drew in all kind of users looking for the official answer to not having an iPhone, and with that came tons of new people eager to play with all of the cool things the Nexus One kids were playing with. This raised several interesting problems at the time. For one, almost no one in the CyanogenMod team had Verizon Wireless and even fewer people had a desire to switch carriers. Perhaps more important, several other Android phones had been released both to GSM carrier in the US and internationally. Everyone wanted a way to flash CyanogenMod, but each of these phones had separate needs and required separate maintainers. This was a weird time for Android, where carriers were doing things like disabling NFC chips in phones for seemingly no reason. The single IRC channel quickly fragmented into many different channels to more easily discuss the individual needs of each device. Working with Verizon phones was a relatively low priority for most, both because Verizon was way more likely to be litigious and because CDMA networks are complicated and terrible things compared to the relative simplicity of GSM. The desire to support these phones grew quickly, though, mostly out of necessity. HTC had released the Evo on Sprint with a customized version of Android, Motorola's Droid wasn't quite the same as "stock Android", and Samsung was releasing phones on AT&T and T-Mobile with their customizations as well. These modifications all had the same things in common: they had a couple of ideas that were worth implementing on CyanogenMod, and software updates to add features Google was releasing weren't coming to these phones anytime soon. Supporting all of these phones required more than just the free time of a couple talented software developers and clever tinkerers. Each new build took time and energy on someone's computer, and a desire for a centralized repository for all of the ideas being tested on all of the phones was a must. The CyanogenMod donations link was reasonably active, especially when team members reminded everyone the link existed, but in a time before Kickstarter or Patreon or really even significant activity on Twitter this meant working together to build a centralized place to build for all of these devices. It was time for the little blue bugdroid on a skateboard to become stickers and buttons and even umbrellas to help pay for the cost of maintaining the steadily increasing cost of supporting everything at the pace Android was expanding.

It was time for the little blue bugdroid on a skateboard to become stickers and buttons to help pay for the cost of maintaining the growing demand for builds, and builders.

The CyanogenMod team eventually grew to try reselling virtualized servers for other projects among other ideas, and eventually the project itself started making money. This meant more phones could be bought for more maintainers when new hardware was released, and eventually the team could offer nightly builds for the more popular phones. Every night there was a new build available with a new tweak. Sometimes these were small changes, sometimes major features were tested and added. Users got in the habit of flashing every single day to try the new things and offer feedback, and the teams contributors with their own ideas continued to grow alongside the users. This growth period wasn't enough for anyone to draw a salary or anything. CyanogenMod thrived as a project that offered a better way to use your phone, with features manufacturers either hadn't thought of or didn't want to add. This was a weird time for Android, where carriers were doing things like disabling NFC chips in phones for seemingly no reason and manufacturers were starting to figure out ways to build exclusive services that would encourage users to stay loyal and only buy that brand. As most of those ideas failed and crumbled, CyanogenMod continued to thrive and grow. Growing up is hard