I asked my friend Russell Holly to write a short blog post about how CM will never contain Carrier IQ. Enjoy.

Everybody with access to a web browser over the last week or so has undoubtedly seen the recent upheaval about Carrier IQ. The truth is, Carrier IQ has been around for quite some time. It is one of the nastier examples of bloatware installed by carriers, and it is more than likely something that will always be there in some form or fashion. That is, as long as your phone is running the OEM provided version of Android.

As this version of Android is based entirely on work from the Android Open Source Project, the CyanogenMod team would like to assure everyone that Carrier IQ has never, and will never be a part of our Operating System. There is no risk of this kind of software to ever be shipped as a part of CyanogenMod, period. Please, take it upon yourselves to educate anyone who is concerned about Carrier IQ, and offer them CyanogenMod as the only real opt-out they are likely to get any time soon.

I couldn’t agree more with his words. We at CyanogenMod would like everyone to know that if you are running our software, you are not running theirs.

The CM Touchpad team has decided that they feel an Alpha is in order. The following is what one of the members, dalingrin, sent me to post here on the main site. I hope you enjoy this build that countless hours have gone into. However, please realize this is not a final product nor does it indicate the performance of upcoming stable build.

The full source will be released when the 8×60 tree is merged in the upcoming weeks. In the mean time, enjoy this developer preview.

After many near-sleepless nights, we have an early sneak peak at the CyanogenMod 7.1 port for the HP TouchPad. This initial alpha release is, as they say, rough around the edges. There are still plenty of bugs and a few non-working features, but overall it should be in a state that you can at least play around with Android on your TouchPad.

Initial installation will be done with a custom installer called the Alpha CyanogenMod Experimental Installer, or “ACMEInstaller”. The installer will resize the WebOS media volume to make room for Android. It will then create three new volumes: cm-system, cm-cache, and cm-data. The /sdcard storage found in typical Android handsets will actually be the WebOS media volume. This way, you can easily share your media between WebOS and Android. ACMEInstaller will be used to install ClockworkMod Recovery, CyanogenMod 7, and the Moboot bootloader.

To easily boot between different operating systems, a new bootloader, called Moboot, featuring a boot menu was developed by jcsullins with help from tmzt. They have done a fantastic job in a very short period of time to get a functional and well-made boot menu solution.

This first alpha has plenty of bugs, but many things are working at least partially, such as but not limited to:
-GPU acceleration
-1080p video playback
-Wifi(with caveats)
-Bluetooth(no headset profile)
-Touchstone dock support
-Audio

Known issues include, but are not limited to, the following:
-higher than normal battery drain, ~2%/hr while suspended
-only partially-working camera
-need to change the wifi sleep policy to “never sleep” in wifi settings
-some app compatibility issues
-too many issues to list here

Kernel source is available now at http://github.com/cyanogenmod, and we welcome developers to submit patches for review at http://review.cyanogenmod.org. The rest of the device source will be released as soon as some changes to support the MSM8660 architecture can be merged into mainline CyanogenMod 7. This is expected to happen in fairly short order.

For more information, visit: http://kan.gd/17fw

Thanks for your support, and I hope you enjoy this early look at CyanogenMod 7.1 support for the TouchPad!

I’ve been reading rumors that CyanogenMod’s core philosophy is changing, that we’ve been sold, or that we’ve given up and I want to go on record saying none of this is true at all. As you may know, there are only a handful of people that can approve changes for CM but a lot of developers for it. You may have noticed that we are operating at a slightly slower pace than normal, but that’s simply because we’ve been busy and real life responsibilities come before this project. No one is getting paid to work on the product.

You have most likely become aware that Cyanogen has been hired by Samsung, as that news is traveling through the Android community like wildfire. He is not leaving the project. Samsung is aware of his involvement in CM and there are no qualms from that end. He hasn’t been active recently because he is in the process of relocating to a new city for his new job, that’s all. ChrisSoyars has been hired by Grooveshark and is currently working on projects with them. Koush is working on his DeskSMS application as well as ClockworkMod recovery. And finally, my semester is starting as are my medical school interviews.

As they have before, our insane schedules will calm eventually and we can devote more time to the project. But just because we aren’t around to approve changes doesn’t mean development has stopped or even slowed for CM. There are 40+ talented developers programming behind the scenes night and day to give you the Android distribution that you have come to know and love. On top of all of the above, we are currently in a soft feature-freeze for another 7.1 RC. (You can call it a feature slushie if you like) Because of this, we are reluctant to approve new features that may prove problematic for certain devices for the sake of the stability of the entire tree.

All I ask is that you bear with us during this hectic time.

Support for three of the Samsung Galaxy S devices has arrived from Cyanogenmod. Now supported are the Samsung i9000, T-Mobile Vibrant, and AT&T Captivate. It was a long and interesting road, however, it has been completed. All Most of the hardware of the devices should be in proper working order and you can expect the official nightlies to roll out soon (GPS broken on Vibrant). We’re happy to include you in our family and hope you enjoy both Cyanogenmod 7 and Android 2.3.4.

To see the maintainers for the three devices, look here:

The next round of RCs have arrived.   From RC2 until now has mainly been bug fixes and we’re getting near the final state.  In this release, there may still be some lingering GPS issues on the Evo and the N1 call audio bug hasn’t been fully fixed.  But if you were happy with the previous RCs/Nightlies on your device, there is no reason not to update to this one.

That being said, this is the most stable version of CyanogenMod 7 to date and will probably be the last RC before the final rolls around.  The most notable new fixes are on the tablet side of devices.  The Nook Color, for example, now has working hardware acceleration.  Because of these fixes, many of them are receiving their first RC.  There was also a big fix from AOSP for EGL issues, which is why all devices bumped to RC4 from RC3.

Feel free to grab CM7-RC4 (or RC3.14159265358979323846264338327 as we call it internally) from ROM Manager, our forums, or our mirror network if you prefer manual downloads.

If you are not aware of the controversy surrounding the wallpaper that was recently removed from CyanogenMod, stop reading now.  This is not worth your time.

CyanogenMod began as a small project created by Cyanogen himself.  As the project grew and more users joined the fold, more developers did as well.  It grew from a single developer on one phone (the original G1) to 30+ developers on 25+ phones.  As a result of this massive jump in both users and developers, we reached audiences that we thought were impossible to ever encounter.

The downside of this is that as a userbase grows from 2,000 people to 250,000, so does the amount of people with different beliefs.  No longer is this just a rom with nearly all of the users coming from the United States, but instead our userbase is now global.  Because of such a wide audience, we have to be slightly more careful about what we do and do not incorporate in this rom.

The arguments from both sides expressed valid points.  The ones that were pro-removal mentioned that the wallpaper perhaps infringed on some copyrights and was unprofessional at best.  Those that were against-removal cited among other things, our free speech.  We decided to remove the relic of our younger days in this case as it did not appeal to a portion of our newly acquired userbase.

We recognize that as the largest third party rom in the Android community, we are held to higher standards of professionalism and tact.  That is simply a side effect of existing.  However, I am disappointed in the community’s reaction to our decision.  Whenever this issue arises (as it has in the past) many people begin bashing the guy that originally proposed it.  That is not something I am comfortable with and feel that it should be brought to light.  As a rom that has grown from a community alone, this is not the correct way to gain the support that has caused CM to flourish. No other contribution or suggestion was subject to such community backlash.  I was the person that ultimately approved the removal of the wallpaper, so if you absolutely must harass someone, harass me, @kmobs, instead of Untouchab1e.

This brings us to the final resolution.  The image is no longer included in CM.

Lets move on.