The name is a play on the word kang (slang for stolen code) and AOSP (Android Open Source Project).

[1] It was started as free and open-source software by Roman Birg based on the official releases of Android Open Source Project by Google, with added original and third-party code, features, and control.

[10] Not long after the introduction of the HTC Dream (named the "T-Mobile G1" in the United States) mobile phone in September 2008, a method was discovered to attain privileged control (termed "root access") within Android's Linux-based subsystem.

[13] AOKP is developed using a distributed revision control system with the official repositories hosted on GitHub[14] like many other open source projects.

New features or bug fix changes made by contributors are submitted using Google's source code review system, Gerrit.