Cyanogen co-founder Kondik admits: 'I f***ed up'

Steve Kondik apologises to developers for Cyanogen disaster

Steve Kondik, the founder of Cyanogen, has admitted that he "f***ed up" in a statement to developers following the organisation's latest round of cuts and redundancies.

In a heartfelt post to a private developer Google+ forum [via Android Police], Kondik laid bare the options for Cyanogen and candidly admitted how the company went wrong.

He primarily pointed the finger of blame at ousted CEO and co-founder Kirt McMaster: "Unfortunately once we started to see success, my co-founder apparently became unhappy with running the business and not owning the vision.

"This is when the ‘bullet to the head' and other misguided media nonsense started, and the bad business deals were signed. Being second in command, all I could do was try and stop it, do damage control, and hope every day that something new didn't happen."

The "bullet in the head" remark was the claim by McMaster that it would attempt to out-Google Google over Android, prompting resentment among many developers and, of course, Google itself.

This led to a parting of the ways between Cyanogen and its biggest commercial customer, OnePlus.

But Kondik himself shoulders part of the blame and is quick to eat humble pie. "I f*cked up and got f*cked over," he said.

"It's the Silicon Valley way, isn't it? First world problems in the extreme? It hurts, a lot. I lost a lot of friends, and I'm truly sorry to everyone I let down. I wish I had made different choices and trusted different people (especially one in particularly early on), but all I care about now is figuring out what to do next."

He then candidly laid out the options for the future of Cyanogen, asking developers for their suggestions:

"1. Should we keep going? Is it worth it? I'm sure I can crowdfund the project, especially if we did something like "Darkside" and really revitalised it. I'm not sure of the endgame yet, though.

"2. The main IP is the brand and trademarks. I don't know if I can get it back without a fight, and I'm tired of fighting. We will likely need to fork and rebrand, which might not be a bad thing. Would you support it?

"3. If we reboot, what should we do differently?

"4. The rest of the ROM community seems to be highly dependent on us, but simultaneously wants us dead. How on earth do you fix this?"

To explain. JBQ is probably Jean-Baptiste Queru, who used to run AOSP, the main open-source Android that all forks come from. 'Darkside' is another Android ROM, seemingly dormant since Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Finally, he talks about trying to get the intellectual property and trademarks "back", which suggests that he may be on the way out and that Cyanogen will lose its last link with its founders.