The title was NOT sensationalist, and the change here is a loss of information. They aren't "transitioning" to a .org, their domain was stolen. the .com shouldn't be trusted at this point, as it has apparently been taken over by some rogue former-team-member.
The new title is the same as the post title on Cyanogenmod.org.
The change doesn't really lose information; almost everything in the original title was false. Perhaps a better title would be "cyanogenmod.com hijacked by rogue admin, transitions to cyanogenmod.org". But the usual policy here when changing titles is to change it to the original title of the article, which is what it is now.
There is, so far as I've discerned, an automated bot running that changes submission titles to the HTML title of the URL. No human intervention, no human judgment.
Maybe there was a middle ground, but the former title made it seem like CyanogenMod itself was taken offline, and made no mention to the domain itself. I'd say in situations like that it's just better to default to the actual article title.
As OP I agree. The title was not sensationalist. I guess moderators changed the link and title. I agree with changing link but not with the present title. The .com domain was my bookmarked domain and usually I will go this domain first before going to any other CM link. As a donor to CM I felt shocked that even the .com Google apps account is now taken down by rogue admin. Usually these accounts were used by users and other developers. All the social media were also linking through this .com email addresses AFAIK.
Why is everyone complaining about the title? Yes its a bit sensationalist but all of this is detracting from the actual story here.
While it's true that cyanogenmod.com going down may not serve a functional problem to most people but it is a pretty sad story. I have used Cyanogen on a couple phones and all my Android devices use the Clockwork recovery, which is an incredible tool. I don't know the specifics but I don't think anybody on the Cyanogen team was receiving money for their work. Granted, there are premium versions in the Play Store, but certainly nobody is getting rich of Cyanogen or clockwork.
The fact that somebody is screwing them over just to make a couple bucks seems pretty terrible to me. These guys do this for fun and for the good of the community (not to mention for the good of Google), so my heart really goes out to them. I hope you get everything sorted out and get everything back up.
There is a PayPal donation form at the bottom of their site. I have donated in the past when they have asked and I'm sure I will this time if they make an appeal to pay for legal fees.
Again, so sad to see this happen to such a great group of devs.
I like the idea of buying a related domain and donating it to the community as mentioned in another comment. I agree that we as community of hackers should try to figure out how can we help CM who are just a group a volunteers doing great work for the community.
And in the thread, he mentions that Swappa is doing the same thing, $500 a month plus $10 per device sold, though there's no way to verify if that's true. Swappa claims to donate $5 per device sold to Cyanogenmod, though who knows if that's been going to the actual project or this joker. http://swappa.com/cyanogenmod
That's some pretty serious fraud there, if this is true.
This is pretty scary now that CM has started to do OTA updates again. What server is that mechanism checking and trusting? Is there any cryptographic verification for update packages? Whose keys are used (the keys of the bad dude?)?
This is definitely important to find out in the wake of this incident, and I'm anxious to learn the answers myself. That said, CyanogenMod distributes its builds through a separate dedicated site [1] that appears to be unaffected.
It's the #1 on Bing and DuckDuckGo as well, though interestingly you can still see links in the .com in both Bing and DuckDuckGo results, but Google has eliminated the .com completely from their results.
Cyanogenmod devs need to get PGP keys and start using cryptographic signatures like now. The guy never would have been able to impersonate in the first place if they were doing this, and now it's even more important that the @cyanogenmod.com domain is directing to a different mail server.
Not sure if that's the case. Most people he was impersonating himself to probably don't know enough to find and check PGP signatures; especially since most email does not come with PGP signatures, the lack of a signature is not something that would cause anyone to bat an eyelash.
Does anybody know how this "rogue" webmaster took undue advantage of the CyanogenMod brand? The Facebook post states something about referral deals with community sites. Any idea what that would mean in practical terms?
According to the conversation linked to by CM member koush[1], in one instance he approached a CM distributor requesting a 'contribution':
"Hi, we noticed that you are selling these cards with CyanogenMod builds. We do not however seem to have any agreements in place for this and feel it's only fair that you start contributing to the CyanogenMod project to continue selling your products."
It seems a nice idea, buying the CM.com domain and donating it to the project. Wonder if this sleazeball had a change of heart, or was he planning on embezzling referral traffic the whole time?
And due to the small size (and lack of funds), the CyanogenMod.com domain was bought by a third-party back in 2009 and donated to CM, when CM was a much smaller project and had no online presence besides XDA.
I must be missing something (and speaking from a US perspective), but was $10 really unattainable in order to secure a domain? Three years worth would have been $30-ish dollars now. Genuinely curious what led up to this scenario.
Why are large parts of the android custom ROM community unprofessional and immature?
I always shiver a little if I have to dive into xda-forums, but this takes it to the next level. Puts all the actual hard working developers in a bad light.
I think its because they grew out of the phone ROM community, which pre-Android, generally meant hacking up a binary blob and distributing them on forums. This was never quite legal, but lots of people did it anyhow. Like any community build around legal grey areas, like Xbox and PS3 modders, there's a lot more anonymity, less professionalism, and the like, than there is, say in the free software world, where people are legally, and in many cases professionally, writing software to run on their own machines.
Even once Android came out, there are enough binary blobs, like the actual phone firmware, drivers, the Play Store, the Google Apps, and so on, that a lot of the mods are just redistributions of the binary packages with a few configuration changes and some custom software on top, rather than a rebuild from source of AOSP.
Could you elaborate on why this issue shows that "large parts of the android custom ROM community unprofessional and immature"? As far as I can see, the developers trusted someone they should not have trusted. That is not necessarily a sign of being "unprofessional and immature", is it?
Any volunteer organization risks running into this at some point. --You generally don't have any sort of contract because you're not paying anyone.
I used to help run a convention, and one year the person who had designed the program book decided he deserved compensation and demanded a similar amount of money to let us use the design. We were left with only a couple of days to come up with a new design.
Seems the guy who stole the domain is trying to undo his damage and possibly hand the domain back (likely due to the negative attention this is bringing him). He posted this to his Twitter account a few minutes ago:
Yup, I have the same thing. Is this a(nother) change of heart from the owner? Or did ICANN intervene that quickly? I find it hard to believe its the later.
I don't know what this is, but as the guy asked for money for the domains, which he didn't own, I'd think about asking the police to look into this being extortion.
The ownership is in question. This guy bought the domain in its early days and "donated" it to the project. Does he own it? What if he paid for its continued registration? Does CM own it under trademark? Given the nature of how CM got started, I doubt there was a formal agreement between the parties.
I think he did/does own the domain, on behalf of cm. My best guess is that cm wasn't incorporated, so a human body had to own it. The human body then went full asshat.
I had this happen to me when I started a music blog in 2008. Some trust fund brat decided he would hijack the site and I was forced to basically start over. It was painful but 3 years later I'm glad I did. I was able to rebuild and now have a better site with a better team in place. It'll take time but these guys will recover too. Integrity always wins!
[+] [-] blhack|13 years ago|reply
edit: thanks to the mod that fixed it :)
[+] [-] lambda|13 years ago|reply
The change doesn't really lose information; almost everything in the original title was false. Perhaps a better title would be "cyanogenmod.com hijacked by rogue admin, transitions to cyanogenmod.org". But the usual policy here when changing titles is to change it to the original title of the article, which is what it is now.
[+] [-] cdr|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] publicfig|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saket123|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thechut|13 years ago|reply
While it's true that cyanogenmod.com going down may not serve a functional problem to most people but it is a pretty sad story. I have used Cyanogen on a couple phones and all my Android devices use the Clockwork recovery, which is an incredible tool. I don't know the specifics but I don't think anybody on the Cyanogen team was receiving money for their work. Granted, there are premium versions in the Play Store, but certainly nobody is getting rich of Cyanogen or clockwork.
The fact that somebody is screwing them over just to make a couple bucks seems pretty terrible to me. These guys do this for fun and for the good of the community (not to mention for the good of Google), so my heart really goes out to them. I hope you get everything sorted out and get everything back up.
There is a PayPal donation form at the bottom of their site. I have donated in the past when they have asked and I'm sure I will this time if they make an appeal to pay for legal fees.
Again, so sad to see this happen to such a great group of devs.
[+] [-] saket123|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lambda|13 years ago|reply
And in the thread, he mentions that Swappa is doing the same thing, $500 a month plus $10 per device sold, though there's no way to verify if that's true. Swappa claims to donate $5 per device sold to Cyanogenmod, though who knows if that's been going to the actual project or this joker. http://swappa.com/cyanogenmod
That's some pretty serious fraud there, if this is true.
[+] [-] vitobcn|13 years ago|reply
http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/domain-situation-has-been-re...
They will stay with the .org domain though, and have the previous .com domain redirect to it.
[+] [-] cookiecaper|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BHSPitMonkey|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://get.cm/
[+] [-] streptomycin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chimeracoder|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grandpoobah|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timothya|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cookiecaper|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lambda|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philp|13 years ago|reply
Just curious.
[+] [-] facorreia|13 years ago|reply
"Hi, we noticed that you are selling these cards with CyanogenMod builds. We do not however seem to have any agreements in place for this and feel it's only fair that you start contributing to the CyanogenMod project to continue selling your products."
[1] https://twitter.com/koush/status/268836995890028544
[+] [-] tadfisher|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bronson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greyboy|13 years ago|reply
And due to the small size (and lack of funds), the CyanogenMod.com domain was bought by a third-party back in 2009 and donated to CM, when CM was a much smaller project and had no online presence besides XDA.
I must be missing something (and speaking from a US perspective), but was $10 really unattainable in order to secure a domain? Three years worth would have been $30-ish dollars now. Genuinely curious what led up to this scenario.
[+] [-] polyvisual|13 years ago|reply
Note: it's a shame most of the comments here are about the title of this post.
[+] [-] MrMember|13 years ago|reply
Indeed, I check the HN comments for interesting conversation, not drivel about whether or not the submitted article's title is sensationalist.
[+] [-] VMG|13 years ago|reply
I always shiver a little if I have to dive into xda-forums, but this takes it to the next level. Puts all the actual hard working developers in a bad light.
[+] [-] lambda|13 years ago|reply
Even once Android came out, there are enough binary blobs, like the actual phone firmware, drivers, the Play Store, the Google Apps, and so on, that a lot of the mods are just redistributions of the binary packages with a few configuration changes and some custom software on top, rather than a rebuild from source of AOSP.
[+] [-] raphman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tallanvor|13 years ago|reply
I used to help run a convention, and one year the person who had designed the program book decided he deserved compensation and demanded a similar amount of money to let us use the design. We were left with only a couple of days to come up with a new design.
[+] [-] tripzilch|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drivebyacct2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gcb|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] nacs|13 years ago|reply
"we've already had this conversation. The DNS was changed in preparation to hand the domain back to Steve. You all jumped the gun." https://twitter.com/MrADeveci/status/268837555129167873
"DNS propagation can take 72 hours. The domain was transferred about an hour ago. It was transferred to another UK registrar." - https://twitter.com/MrADeveci/status/268881716876300288
UPDATE: Seems he really has handed the domain back now?: http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/domain-situation-has-been-re...
[+] [-] SafeSituation|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pserwylo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gte910h|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkokelley|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antidoh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] pla3rhat3r|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkup|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jeraimee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shardling|13 years ago|reply
Their original website was taken offline by a (now former) developer, forcing them to change domains. Seems like the title is perfectly accurate.
[+] [-] trhtrsh|13 years ago|reply
But in that case, no domain was transferred, it was just confusing from the start.
[+] [-] rapsac|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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