Cyanogen Hired by Samsung, Will Continue Work on CyanogenMod for Android

Hardware company Samsung today has been revealed to have acquired one of the single most notorious names in Android modification, that being Steve Kondik, aka "Cyanogen" of CyanogenMod 7. For those whose life in the after-hours of their day is hacking and pushing their Android devices to the limits, this news has the potential to be much bigger than Google's early morning acquisition of Motorola. How exactly this will affect how Samsung will operate is not yet known – the next most important question, about what's going to happen to CyanogenMod now that Cyanogen himself is working for Samsung, we've got a bit more insight on that side of the situation.

It was earlier today that Kondik changed his mostly-private Facebook page's employment to Samsung Mobile Software Engineer. Of course since his page is private, we'll lead you no further than this for the time being – instead you can feel free to follow him on Twitter @Cyanogen instead, I'm sure he'll welcome you to it. There you'll be treated to updates on all the goings on inside the CyanogenMod world, a place where you can download the custom ROM CyanogenMod 7, a build for Android that you'll need to hack your device to run.

Now what does this mean for Samsung? We have no idea. Likely it'll mean some modifications in the future to TouchWiz reflecting the innovations Cyanogen himself has made, thusly improving the Android landscape as a whole depending on how you look at it.

What does this mean for CyanogenMod? Kondik assures us all that he will continue to help lead the team of CyanogenMod developers while he works separately for Samsung. Kondik has let it be known that Samsung will allow him to take the skills he's learned in working on Android in the developer world and use them in the "real world." According to Kondik, there are no immediate plans for licensing CyanogenMod directly, Samsung instead hiring him for his obvious skills and knowledge of the Android system.

CyanogenMod is safe, but remains separate from Samsung!

[via Android Community]