CyanogenMod resolves domain troubles

Shortly after the release of CyanogenMod 10, the developers of the alternative open source ROM for Android devices announced that they had lost control of the cyanogenmod.com domain. The domain was originally registered by a third party who "donated" it to the project in 2009 but apparently kept control of the registration. According to project developer Abhisek "ciwrl" Devkota, this person also impersonated project leader Steve "Cyanogen" Kondik to solicit referral deals with other web sites. When the CyanogenMod project asked to have control of the domain handed back to them, the third party apparently wanted them to pay $10,000 for it, which the project could not afford.

After announcing that the project would switch over to using only cyanogenmod.org going forward, the unnamed third party apparently contacted the project and agreed to hand the cyanogenmod.com domain over without payment. A second post on the CyanogenMod blog then announced that the situation had been resolved and that from now on, the .com domain will simply forward to cyanogenmod.org – with this, the developers consider the issue resolved. They chose not to name the third party, but community members nevertheless managed to uncover their identity. In the second blog post, the CyangogenMod developers stressed: "We ask that you please not perform any vigilante actions, we do not condone any such thing; just let this fade."

The developers assured their users that "lessons have been learned" from the incident. To make sure that such a situation does not arise again, the project has done some internal reorganisation to prevent any one single person from having sole control over such an important part of the project's infrastructure.

(fab)