The CEO along with a co-founder of Cyanogen is responding to anonymously sourced reports that the company is turning away from its vision of an operating system based on Android in favor of apps. Both Android Police and Recode posted stories about the move.
CEO Kirt McMaster tweeted out his response.
Cyanogen NOT pivoting to apps. We are an OS company and our mission of creating an OPEN ANDROID stands. FALSE reporting was outstanding.
— Kirt McMaster (@cyanogenone) July 25, 2016
The executive did confirm the layoffs that were also tipped to the outlets in a tweet on Saturday. It is not officially known how many got pink slips, but sources alleged about 30 employees did.
really sad we had to let go of some wonderful folks this week. startups and disruption are brutal.
— Kirt McMaster (@cyanogenone) July 23, 2016
McMaster is presumed to be batting off social media trolls challenging him on his self-proclaimed mission for Cyanogen to put “a bullet through Google’s head”.
@getpingui lol yup, he blocked me as well. Typical.
— vın (@_vinr) July 24, 2016
VentureBeat has also found that he has been tweeting from his @cyanogenone account mostly from an iPhone — that does not help him to be perceived as an effective leader at a company with a “mission of creating an OPEN ANDROID,” regardless of whether or not he has been.
Meanwhile, co-founder Steve Kondik has penned a blog post at the CyanogenMod site, assuring users that neither the project nor the company are disappearing or changing their missions.
“Cyanogen Inc (including myself) will still be sponsoring the project and will continue to have an active role in it’s (sic) development,” Kondik wrote.
Further developments on where the software and the company are headed will be on the Cyanogen blog.
Source: CyanogenMod
Via: XDA-Developers, VentureBeat