Cyanogenmod Team betrayed from within, Cyanogenmod.com whois deleted

[Bateluer]

The CM team posted this on their Facebook page earlier today.

We at CM are very trusting of our members, showed by both respect and permissions granted to those people we consider part of the team. Last month, this trust was violated in a substantial way. In the spirit of openness, here is what happened.

CM’s history is well established, with Cyanogen releasing his original ROM for the G1 on XDA forums. Back then, there was no “CyanogenMod” in terms of the organization and structure that we have today. The builds were hosted on Steve’s personal machine, the original server was a donation of spare kit from Phaseburn. 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.

Fast-forward 3 years, we have 3 extremely powerful build boxes donated by the community and an army of developers, contributors, and supported devices. But, a little over a week ago, things took a bad turn. The person owning the CyanogenMod.com domain was caught impersonating Steve to make referral deals with community sites. When confronted and asked to hand over control of the domain amicably, he decided he wanted 10K USD for it, which we won't (and can't) pay.

We contacted those he had established deals with, only to discover that the person tasked with maintaining our web presence was setting up deals under the CM name, and impersonating Cyanogen himself. Plenty of satisfying evidence was provided by those sites / entities to make us certain that this wasn't a misunderstanding or one-time thing.

This leaves us at a critical impasse. Being trusted with CM’s web presence means this member had control over the CM social network accounts (Twitter/FB) as well as domains (cyanogenmod.com). We have changed ownership of the social media accounts. When asked again to make the transition nicely, he responded with the following

“Hi, so you think by removing all my access across the infrastructure was going to be a great idea? We had a chat yesterday, you've decided to end this bitter. How about I just change the DNS entries right now. CM will practically go down.”

Refusing to be extorted for funds, and then being threatened is “ending it bitter”? Today, it happened: all of our records were deleted, and cyanogenmod.com is slowly expiring out of the Internet and being replaced by blank pages and non-existing sites. @cyanogenmod.com e-mail is now being directed to a mailserver completely out of our control, too.

We have begun the dispute process with ICANN to reclaim our domain. In the meantime, please utilize CyanogenMod.org and all applicable subdomains.

As mentioned, this member also managed our Google Apps for Business account, and therefore our @cyanogenmod.com email addresses. These addresses should be considered discontinued until further notice. We will be contacting the Google team to reclaim rights to the apps account. In the meantime, please contact cmcyanogenmod@gmail.com for any devrel questions or other issues. A mailserver is being established to transition devrel and other support email addresses. We will provide those when they are finalized, and they will utilize the .org domain.

We don’t like how this played out, and we are deeply hurt. Likewise, we are deeply saddened at the confusion this may have caused the community. We will continue to be open about the what, when, how, but unfortunately, we may never know the ‘why’ - though greed comes to mind. The team itself has not made a profit off of CM and that is not our goal. But to have one of our own betray the community like this is beyond our comprehension. We will update you all as things progress.

Know that we are pursuing every available legal means to regain control over our domain.

Please note, all donations that were given directly to Cyanogen (aka Shade@chemlab.org) did indeed reach their destination and are not affected.

If you are a company out there that believes they have also entered into agreements with “CM” by this person impersonating Steve, please contact Shade@chemlab.org. We’d like to get a handle on how widespread this was before we file charges.

-The CyanogenMod Team

Pretty dick move of this guy. Hope they get access to their domains and email accounts quickly.

 

[Red Storm]

Wow. Hope they get things sorted out. What a dick move.

 

[Sheep]

I'd enlist 4Chan and let them unleash the hounds on this douchebag, but I'm kind of a jerk that way.

 

[lothar]

I'd enlist 4Chan and let them unleash the hounds on this douchebag, but I'm kind of a jerk that way.

Do it please.

 

[mikegg]

$10k is fair trade. If he's going to put his time and money into the domain and managing their operations, then he should get some $$$ out of it.

 

[Zink]

It's a volunteer organization and he donated the domain and then killed it.

 

[Mopetar]

Pretty dick move of this guy. Hope they get access to their domains and email accounts quickly.

Yeah, what an ass. I know one of the guys who worked on porting CM to a few different devices. Not sure if he's still working with the rest of the team, but I'll have to talk to him to see what he has to say about it.

I'd enlist 4Chan and let them unleash the hounds on this douchebag, but I'm kind of a jerk that way.

I've heard that they really like being someone's personal army.

$10k is fair trade. If he's going to put his time and money into the domain and managing their operations, then he should get some $$$ out of it.

I doubt that he went into it expecting to get paid. If he wanted money, he could have asked ahead of time, and if the CM guys didn't want to pay him, he should have given the responsibilities of the position over to someone else. Given the nature of the CM team, I doubt anyone promised him any compensation for his time.

 

[Sheep]

I've heard that they really like being someone's personal army.

From what I've seen they tend to take on things of personal interest to them. I'd bet a not insigificant number of them use Android phones with custom ROMs like CM.

 

[Mopetar]

From what I've seen they tend to take on things of personal interest to them. I'd bet a not insigificant number of them use Android phones with custom ROMs like CM.

While that's true, they'll be way more resentful of some outside force moving them to action than they would be to actually undertaking it by themselves. Leave them to their own devices.

 

[openwheel]

$10k is fair trade. If he's going to put his time and money into the domain and managing their operations, then he should get some $$$ out of it.

Unless there was a signed agreement. He should get no compensation. Welcome to the real world.

 

[cl-scott]

There are a few things I would suggest for that guy, but since I'm posting from work, I'll just leave it up to your imagination. If anyone happens to be an Always Sunny in Philadelphia fan, there was a whole episode where they were debating the relative merits of different ways of getting back at someone. That would be a good start.

I'm more of an AOKP user myself, but I used CM back on my OG Droid, and there's a good working relationship between AOKP and CM devs, so here's hoping this has a minimal, if any, impact on CM development.

 

[soulcougher73]

I'd enlist 4Chan and let them unleash the hounds on this douchebag, but I'm kind of a jerk that way.

:thumbsup:

Guy deserves to die

 

[Paladin]

Looks like he's giving control back to the team, via droid life

The guy's twitter account: here
Not cool what this guy did, hopefully it can all be 'fixed'.

 

[cl-scott]

Looks like he's giving control back to the team, via droid life

The guy's twitter account: here
Not cool what this guy did, hopefully it can all be 'fixed'.

Actually, now that I think about it a little, one of the worst things that will likely come from this, is that the CM team will probably take steps to make sure this can't happen again. That will then result in there being at least some level of permanent mistrust between developers within the team. In the back of their minds, they'll always be wondering if someone else will ever pull a stunt like this and who it will be.

 

[Bateluer]

Unless there was a signed agreement. He should get no compensation. Welcome to the real world.

Well, he was committing identify theft by impersonating Steve/Cyanogen and entering into deals in his name. Unless I'm mistaken, that's quite illegal.

 

[MarkLuvsCS]

Well, he was committing identify theft by impersonating Steve/Cyanogen and entering into deals in his name. Unless I'm mistaken, that's quite illegal.

It seems incredibly childish and I hope karma visits, but unless the accounts are using personal confidential information I don't see how it falls into the illegal category. If the deals were entered into some fake acct setup in his name I can see that as a problem, but if I went around and said "Oh hello, I could use money for my Cyanogenmod, my name is Steve. Please paypal me blah@paypal.com". I don't see how that technically is illegal.