[Epic 4G General] DevinXtreme:
There's a lot of misinformed posting going on in here.

First of all, CyanogenMod is NOT AOSP. It is, however, more AOSP than Samsung's or HTC's stock ROMs. It is based on AOSP and built from the ground-up, but AOSP it is not.

AOSP is the bones on which everything you see on Android is built. Some phones have true, pure AOSP builds, but we do not. The CyanogenMod project, once completely, will allow a build of AOSP to run on the Epic since they share all the same drivers, but, once again, that doesn't make CyanogenMod completely AOSP, as people so willingly say.

Now, what IS CyanogenMod?

The goal is quite simple: It aims to achieve a single user-experience across multiple platforms through the use of open-source software and alternatives. One thing you can expect from the base CyanogenMod experience is that if you are running CyanogenMod7-RC2 on your MyTouch 3G Slide, you can talk to you friend who is using CyanogenMod7-RC2 on his HTC Evo 4G and be able to completely understand everything each other's phone can provide (sans hardware differences, such as CPU speeds and front-facing camera).

It is also meant to open new doors for developers to completely customize their user experience. Every last part of the CyanogenMod experience is open source. That's how new features are almost constantly being added.

Another goal is to keep every phone up-to-date with the newest version of Android as it is rolled out. Providing a basic starting ground for every phone means that patching the Android system to the latest version is considerably easier. That's why, several times, I've mentioned that the work done by noobnl on CyanogenMod6 has helped us getting where we are with CyanogenMod7. While we are not using it verbatim, the work points us in the right direction and shows us how to easily fix what is broken.

People are asking questions like "Will program X be left in" or "Does this add X". The answers are a lot more complicated than just yes or no. The fact of the matter is that, for the most part, NOTHING from the stock Samsung software is included. Apps may resemble what was in your stock experience, but that's only because Samsung based their own software after their AOSP counterparts. With that said, none of Sprint's bloatware is on CyanogenMod. I'm not even sure the most of them would even work. Things like Nascar, Sprint TV, and the like just are not there because the system is not built around them, plain and simple.

Because of this lack of bloat, you are gaining much in the way of speed, performance, and usability. Carrier IQ isn't there to bog your phone down. Useless DRM services aren't running in the background, eating your battery. The Sprint Apps aren't taking up valuable space in your phone's memory. It's clean.

Another thing CyanogenMod will provide to the community is a basis to provide some real meaty ROMs. Right now, for the most part, the ROMs are reskins and rehashes of other ROMs, save two or three. Fight as you might, but that's the truth. CyanogenMod is completely different and will allow developers more control over what they are doing. A lot of cool features can be made, such as autoupdaters and random system tweaks, and they can all be built in. For example, if you look at CyanogenMod now, you'll notice that ADW is the default launcher, and its settings are integrated into the phone's settings instead of being a standalone.

And the beauty of it all is that everything can be made to work how you please. For those worried about the video codec problem, it's a problem that can be solved simply by making those codecs work on CyanogenMod, which shouldn't involve too much trickery.

I hope this answers your question.