[myTouch 4G Android Development] ckisgen:
some truth for those of you who still care about that sort of thing ..

...here we go again... once again the extreme minority of the XDA community shows us all why many of the real developers moved away from here or stopped developing altogether. though I can understand, based on the 7.5% of the whole/actual story that you may know regarding everything you just commented on, why you may feel that way - bottom line : you just simply don't know what you're talking about.

I have very purposely kept many things that went on 'behind the curtain' regarding TeamRoyal, RoyalKnight, and many other 'big' names around here off of the forums (or do what the other immature holier-than-thou developers have done and sling mud and make person attacks on twitter or any other avenue where they feel like they can beat their chest and appear more credible by slandering others without anything to back it up). I did this out of respect for my former team members as a whole, RoyalKnight, and also just to try and keep the school yard shenanigans that became commonplace around here to a minimum.

but just so the rest of the users who read this thread can have the record set straight on a couple of the things you said -

1) First off the timeline ..

- This ROM originally began as Jaywan's Nexus S port

- Later on, RoyalKnight and Jaywan and a few others teamed up (the original TeamRoyal) and RoyalKnight took the ROM over and renamed it RoyalGinger

- I joined TeamRoyal shortly after that and began working with RoyalKnight on this ROM specifically along with some other projects

- RoyalKnight handed over the RoyalGinger project to me at v1.5 (back towards the beginning of the year). Prior to and up to that point, RoyalGinger was built by taking an already completely compiled/optimized/built CM7 ROM zip and swapping out the kernel and a few other basic UI cuts and pastes. I mean no disrespect by any of that - essentially that's how you 'cook' a ROM and is how many of the ROMs you see on this forum are made.

- Starting at v1.6 (may have been v2.0, i can't remember and it's after 6am and haven't gone to bed so i don't feel like going back and checking) - I literally started completely over from scratch and began compiling RoyalGinger using a combination of CM7 and AOSP source code (mostly CM7, especially early on, but even in the beginning I didn't just take the entire line for line CM7 for Glacier source and compile it, I've always purposely left out different pieces or commits, or added in source code from other sources such as Code Aurora, Google's AOSP source tree, etc). Around this time, I also began compiling my own kernels and bundling them with RoyalGinger. The stock launcher that has been in RoyalGinger since I began compiling came from Google's Nexus One AOSP source code, which I made some changes to the code to change some UI elements and also speed it up quite a bit. As time went on, I began merging less and less of CM7s across the board commits and only cherry picked the new additions that seemed the most useful/stable/necessary. All along the way, (back when I was much more active and had more time to spend on this) I tried to stay at the front of the pack bundling things like a fully working Netflix, gTalk video chat, and so on. Most of these required changes or tweaks to not only those individual APKs but the frameworks itself, and sometimes the kernel. As I recall, my RoyalGinger was the first (non Sense based) ROM that had both Netflix and gTalk 2 way video chat working (with functional audio and no FCs or requirement on whether a PC had to initiate the video call, etc).

- Sometime after I took over as the dev on RoyalGinger - RoyalKnight stepped down from TeamRoyal to focus on other areas of his life and left me in charge of TeamRoyal.

- After RoyalKnight returned to developing in some capacity, he came back to us at TeamRoyal (naturally) and agreed that I would remain as the team lead. After a relatively short period of time, it became clear to myself and the other major players of TeamRoyal that RoyalKnight and the rest of us had differing ideas/philosophies and were basically going in two different directions. So, out of respect for RoyalKnight (still no ill feelings from myself toward him then.. or now for that matter) myself and the entire remainder of TeamRoyal 'left' and changed the name to reflect our fairly new affiliation with the greater TeamACS umbrella. I made the decision then to keep the name of this ROM as RoyalGinger just because of its relatively large popularity and it being fairly established.

GUYS COME ON, at the end of the day - no one 'owns' the rights to the name TeamRoyal or RoyalGinger or any of that sort of thing. This is all open source AND JUST A HOBBY. (on a side note, as far as I know, RoyalKnight has neither royalty in his blood line nor is an actual knight. not that it matters, I'm just trying to further prove the point about how absurd making any kind of stink about a name is)

....So, I laid all of that timeline out to show that - yes sckboy, at one time it WAS RoyalKnights ROM. But it hasn't been for a very long time and the ROM as you see it now (and for the last many versions) has literally no leftover parts from RoyalKnights early builds and isn't even remotely put together in the same way. Therefore, very obviously, it's not his ROM to make any calls on anymore and hasn't been for some time now.

2) That's great that you would change the name. Guess what? It's not your ROM and therefore not your call so there's no point in going much further on this one. By your 'logic' - Jaywan should be allowed to come in here and demand the name be changed to Jaywan's Miracle Hair Growth Formula Version 9.17 ... after all he did happen have something to do with a ROM that shared this ROMs name light years ago, right?

Your reasons for the name change was because it's Royals ROM? Kindly see item #1 above. Not only did RoyalKnight turn this entire project over to me nearly a year ago (thereby relinquishing not only the OP but any real 'control' or decision making authority). Your other reason was because it was TeamRoyal's ROM? Same story here, I led TeamRoyal for most of this year after RoyalKnight stepped down all the way up until the moment I basically dismantled it...

...so do I see where you're going with this? Um, nope.

RoyalKnight is all over this thread because he was a big part of TeamRoyal a long time ago during the early stages of this ROM, which once again (other than the name) he has zero work or input on the ROM it's current state. Not an insult, just a fact.

This ROM is not his and hasn't been for some time. If you don't like that or the name of my ROM - it's very simple. Don't download it and don't waste yours, mine, and everyone else's time by posting on this thread.

3) I won't get into whether someone has the "right" to make a post in a ROM thread (which is not theirs .. feel free to check the OP or re-read my essay above on why it's my work and ROM and not his anymore) and although I'm almost certain that it violates at least one XDA rule regarding posts in development forum threads - I very clearly stated in my initial post that you replied to that it was my opinion that it was in bad taste to plug another ROM that doesn't exist (and even if it did, same principal) in someone else's thread.

4) This ROM isn't dead unless the developer/OP (me) declares it dead (or an XDA forum moderator I suppose, but that's not very likely to happen, especially in this case). This was the entire motivation behind my initial post yesterday - I took exception to the fact that RoyalKnight came in here and posted that there would be no further updates to this ROM when I had clearly never said that and even am on record saying that there will be. If the updates aren't coming fast enough for you, go write your congressman or write a country music song about it. I don't get paid for this, I have a real life outside of all of this. And at this point, any future updates will be made primarily for my own use and I'll likely choose to continue to share those with whoever else would like to use them.

5) The only thing you said in your post that was true was that RoyalKnight was the initial developer of the first few versions of RoyalGinger and if it wasn't for him passing it along to me, I wouldn't be the dev of it now. I have always thanked him and given him respect for that. I have gone out of my way not only on XDA but in other situations not to share discussions, decisions, and circumstances in the public (aka - air anyones dirty laundry like so many others seem to get off on doing..I'm not speaking of RoyalKnight on this one..to my knowledge, he hasn't done this) mainly because he is the one who gave me an initial opportunity and I have always appreciated it. But I am the one who ran with that and put in the hundreds of countless hours and sleepless nights working, learning, researching, hitting walls, overcoming obstacles, and eventually delivering the ROM that many multiple thousands of people overwhelmingly have enjoyed. (well over 10k downloads the last several version releases)

I have not 'bit the hand that fed me' in any of these posts but rather stated simple truths and, in my view, pretty professionally asked others not to make statements about the status or future of my own work or ROM projects.

I will say it again - I still plan on completing the next update to RoyalGinger as soon as I am able to do so. And I still have no plans on changing the name mostly because it's just easier that way and everyone already knows it as that.

So I suppose I will end my thesis here the same way you ended your hyperbole/post .... people, please don't be fooled.