When I heard about the cease-and-desist order Google sent to Cyanogen, my initial thought was to take a wait-and-see attitude, assuming that something would be worked out. But I’ll admit, seeing what Cyanogen himself had to say had me pretty pessimistic about the future of custom ROMs. I should have stuck with my initial thought.Â

First, A ray of hope snuck into his Twitter feed. Today, Cyanogen outlined the way forward in a longer piece on his site:

There are lots of things we can do as end-users and modders, though, without violating anyones rights. Most importantly, we are entitled to back up our software. Since I donâ€™t work with any of these closed source applications directly, what I intend to do is simply ship the next version of CyanogenMod as a â€œbare bonesâ€ ROM. Youâ€™ll be able to make calls, MMS, take photos, etc. In order to get our beloved Google sync and applications back, youâ€™ll need to make a backup first. Iâ€™m working on an application that will do this for you. The idea is that youâ€™ll be able to Google-ify your CyanogenMod installation, with the applications and files that shipped on YOUR device already. Or, you can just use the basic ROM if you want. It will be perfectly functional if you donâ€™t use the Google parts.

I originally speculated that one possible solution would be that “his ROMS wonâ€™t include those core apps, but there will be some place else to get them.” It didn’t occur to me– we already have them on our phones, Â so if they’re backed up, we don’t need anywhere else to get them.

One last thing: if you found yourself freaked out by the prospect of no-more-CyanogenMod, but have never dropped something in his tip jar, please consider doing so to support all the great work he does. There’s a PayPal widget right below his Twitter posts on the right side of his site.