[Galaxy Note II Original Android Development] pulser_g2:
Interesting post.

Unfortunately declines to address many things... Anyway a few thoughts;

"I want something that I can not only hack on, but something that is awesome to use every day and I think we are finally starting to get there."

Agree, but only just starting to get there? Is that why we're seeing more "make the decision for the user, and remove his choice"? An example for MDNIE - it seems the preferred way is to use a predefined preset and remove the option. Riiiighhhht.... Why remove the ability to change it? Because apparently not enough people use it...

CM wants to make the ROM for the average user. Unfortunately the power user is the one who suffers in this scenario where anything seen as too complicated is removed for our own protection...

Some say, "well go use AOKP then", but that's a different kettle of fish - people have happily used CM for years without issue, as they recognise they want the ability to control device functions, but accept they don't need to customise the colour of the navigation bar, and align their clock with pixel precision. CM was the ROM that gave you back the importance choices for the power user, which Google removed... Is that still the goal? Or is the goal now simply to get the biggest userbase?

I suggest there are more than enough "marmites" in Android - some people hate the backlight on their touch keys... Some people hate that the backlight stops... The point of the custom ROM is to give back the power of choice to the person who matters on your device - you!

The same applies for things like disabling the input method notification - Android defaults to showing a notification to change your keyboard, whenever you type... Some people love it, some people hate it... Fortunately it has a toggle to control it. That gives you the choice of whether it is on or off.

Though unfortunately this post, which is nice words, doesn't address issues like those which [MENTION=591147]Entropy512[/MENTION] raised. For example, the way in which his patches for the mako kernel were totally overlooked because of the way one person is allowed to eschew an esteemed developer who's programmed for more devices than I've had hot meals...

He's posted more in this thread on the matter, but that's something which seems to need a frank response - CM want to encourage conteobutions, and complain if people don't contribute. They do, and then are shunned or told their contribution is useless.

Another unaddressed concern is why CM would prefer someone else make a privacy fork, rather than care about user privacy within the ROM (beyond the anti-leech properties of privacy guard). Apparently that wasn't within the scope of what they were doing.

Surely CM should be trying to push the envelope, making a fully usable and amazing experience ROM, as Steve said above, without betraying their users to advertisers and tracking networks who profit from selling the user as a product. While privacy guard is a good "half step" (stops apps like faces from harvesting your contacts without permission, for those who use it), it remains a half step, as it's still possible to uniquely identify a user by their device by any app, without any permissions (ahem, CPU serial and device serial number).

Since the user can't easily change these, they can forever be tracked, and have their actions sold on to others, based on these identifiers. Is that OK to do to the user, after telling them they're protected by privacy guard?

Finally the matter of anti features - no comment there I saw regarding CTS. As others have commented here, full and unfaltering CTS compliance will make an awful experience for users and leave them with an unusable phone for many (ie. Goodbye external SD card). I know many people reading this bought their phone BECAUSE it had an external SD for expandable storage. Unfortunately those who aspire their rom to be shipped on phones must follow CTS, and CTS will stop that.