[Off-topic] BlackMesa123:
The reason why I’m deciding to write this now after a period of radio silence on my end is more as a way for me to let off steam and have a respectful debate rather than generating hate or wanting attention.

If you’re reading this you probably already know me or saw me elsewhere, but if you don’t, let me briefly introduce myself: my name is Salvo, better known as BlackMesa123 in the Android modding underground (Samsung’s one to be exact), I’m the author of KnoxPatch and I’ve been maintaining other projects such as TWRP and TouchWiz/OneUI based custom ROMs with almost 10 years of experience behind me.

I’ve always been fascinated by tech and finding out how things work behind the scenes. OS modding has been a personal hobby of mine since I discovered custom Windows XP ISOs as a kid, and Android has been a huge point of interest for me due to various reasons: its popularity at the time, the want to get new features and cool stuff others can’t do or don’t have, and most importantly getting the maximum from my device in terms of performance/daily usage. It is no coincidence that my very first experience with Android modding happened with a very old device of mine, an LG E610, I can still remember little me flashing CyanogenMod through CWM recovery before TWRP was a thing.

More than 10 years have passed since those moments, and it’s very sad for me to not feel that magic anymore today, the same magic that overtime was dispelled for various reasons: growing up, losing interest about the Android world, Google and other OEMs discouraging modding in all the possible ways, and of course, the unnoticeable toxicity this community brings with it.

I’ve probably seen it all during my stay in this community, from “simple” stuff such as people selling software they don’t even own (paid ROMs) to worse ones: people faking their death, exposed pedophiles, doxxing etc. If your mind can imagine a bad situation, even the most random one that could happen, stay assured it may have already happened here.

Let’s not forget kanging, one of the biggest plagues this community suffers from imho, if you’re a semi-decent developer you know how it feels when you see someone stealing something you’ve been working on for hours/days/weeks. Most so called “devs” will rather steal your work rather than do it themselves. I’ll avoid making a list of every time I saw my work uncredited or straight up stolen on other projects (even in recent times) because that’s not what this post is about, but yes, I know when someone steals my stuff, even if I don’t make it public. And guess what, there’s nothing us devs (or anyone else) can do about this phenomenon: you just report the thread/user to XDA and wait for it to be taken down, but what about other sources where such software pieces are provided (*cough* Telegram *cough*)? We literally have to implement countermeasures which target such individuals to avoid seeing our work stolen or reshared without proper credits, which is not the main issue here: the main issue is the whole mindset behind kanging and similar acts, the lack of curiosity to learn stuff yourself as a “dev”, to create some competition (friendly ofc)… To sum it up, apply the “sharing is caring” motto, compared to the reality of truth which is “share and let others use your work without getting nothing in return”. At this point someone would just open source their projects so everyone can contribute to it, right? Well no, the same thing as before applies (not to mention people will steal your work anyway. I have lost the count of how many people have commited my stuff without proper authorship).

There’s a lot more stuff I would want to bring to the light, such as build bots, scammers, people who entitle themselves as “devs” but don’t even know how to properly power on an Android device… but I think this post would be too long and I don’t have enough energy to be the defender of justice who wants to clean the community from “bad guys”.

Having said this, why am I bringing so much stuff to the table? Well, considering the recent events that happened to me, plus the fact I don’t daily drive an Android device for years now, have led me to the conclusion to abandon the Android modding scene indefinitely (just in case this wasn’t clear enough yet lol). This wasn’t a decision that was taken lightly, but I don’t really see any other way to handle things in the light of my previous statements. Keep going with almost zero end users supporting me only to see people asking questions that can be solved by simply reading my threads or my thousands of posts/messages, or stuff such as “How to port this?/How to do that?” had become a bit stressful, and stuff doesn’t get any better when you have a guy stalking/harassing you and other people with your real name and face.

For those really interested, all my open source projects have been archived and moved under https://github.com/Mesa-Labs-Archive, feel free to take a look and do what you want with it, preferably by not creating utter crap.

Last but not least, acknowledgements.

⁃ Thanks to all the people who have been near me in the past years (mostly A52s guys) and expecially lately by listening at my rants, such as @RisenID, @iDrinkCoffeeTG, @PauloWesley, @ShaDisNX255, @Simon1511, @DavidArsene and Gabriel.

⁃ A big thanks to @corsicanu, @ananjaser1211, XDA staff (@V0latyle), Exynos dev community and everyone else who did even the bare minimum to help me lately (let me know if I’m missing someone!).

⁃ Thanks to every single user who used, uses and will use my projects and who truly supports me.

⁃ Thanks to all the kangers, haters and general creeps who constantly remind me that I’m really good at what I do.

⁃ Finally, a big thanks to Telegram and its staff for completely ignoring my multiple reports and help requests, keep up the good job! /s

Feel free to discuss in this thread, please don’t post unrelated questions or stupid stuff, I’ll take the freedom to reply only to the posts I want to and to report the ones I feel like I want or need to.

Useless to say this is the only real account/way to contact me unless I point it out, anyone else claming it’s me is not to be trusted: ignore, block, ban and report.

Have a nice day,

Mesa