CyanogenMod offered features and options not found in the official firmware distributed by mobile device vendors.

[14] In 2013, the founder, Stefanie Jane (née Kondik),[15][16] obtained venture funding under the name Cyanogen Inc. to allow commercialization of the project.

[21] Soon after the introduction of 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.

Similar to many open-source projects, CyanogenMod was developed using a distributed revision control system with the official repositories being hosted on GitHub.

[29] Contributions may be tested by anyone, voted up or down by registered users, and ultimately accepted into the code by one of a handful of CyanogenMod developers.

The custom portions of CyanogenMod are primarily written by Cyanogen (Stefanie Jane) but include contributions from the XDA Developers community (such as an improved launcher tray, dialer, and browser) and code from established open-source projects (such as BusyBox in the shell).

[39] The latest stable version, CyanogenMod 7.2 was released on 16 June 2012, based on Android 2.3.7,[40] bringing a predictive phone dialer, lock-screen updates, ICS animation backports and many bug fixes.

On 29 August 2012, CyanogenMod released a minor update, version 9.1.0, bringing bugfixes and an app called SimplyTapp for NFC payments.

[59] The first nightly release of CyanogenMod 12, based on Android 5.0 Lollipop, began rolling out for a selected number of devices on 6 January 2015.

Cyanogen Inc. was an American venture-funded company with offices in Seattle, Washington and Palo Alto, California, announced officially in September 2013, which aimed to commercialize CyanogenMod.

[75] It began when Kirt McMaster approached Stefanie Jane on LinkedIn in 2013, to discuss possible commercialization of the project.

Several CyanogenMod developers raised concerns that developers who had provided their work in the past were not being appropriately acknowledged or compensated for their free work on what was now a commercial project, further that the original ethos of the community project was being undermined and that these concerns were not being adequately addressed by Cyanogen Inc.[76] Examples include the "Focal" camera app developer Guillaume Lesniak ("xplodwild") whose app was withdrawn from CyanogenMod allegedly following demands by the new company to adopt closed-source modifications and licensing.

A dual-license would do the same, but also protect contributors by forcing unaffiliated entities to contribute back if they use the software in a commercial context.

I proposed the dual-license extension as a way to work around some of the inherent problems with the GPL and give a greater degree of freedom to both him and CM as an organization.

We’re not closing the source or changing the license of any code that has been contributed to the project.Developer Entropy512 also observed that CyanogenMod was legally bound by its position to make some of the firmware changes, because of the Android license and marketing conditions ("CTS terms"), which specify what apps may and may not do, and these were raised in part by Android developers at Google informally speculatively as a result of perceptions of CyanogenMod's high profile in the market.

[80] In his 2013 blog post on Cyanogen's funding, venture funder Mitch Lasky stated:[75] Benchmark has a long history of supporting open source projects intent on becoming successful enterprises.

Our open source history includes Red Hat, MySQL, SpringSource, JBoss, Eucalyptus, Zimbra, Elasticsearch, HortonWorks, and now Cyanogen.

[84] Despite the popularity of CyanogenMod as a custom ROM, Cyanogen Inc. failed to persuade phone companies to use its version of Android.

[89][90][91] Subsequently, Cyanogen's CEO boasted of their intention to displace Google in controlling the Android operating system.

A day after leaving, Stefanie Jane wrote a blog post in which she stated that in hindsight, she had trusted and hired "the wrong people", who had not shared a common vision, and that she had ended up unable to prevent the failure of the company and the forming of a "new team" in its place.

[92] She asked the community to consider forking and rebranding the source code, possibly with some form of crowdfunding based on the project's underlying popularity.

[89] Early responses of tablet and smartphone manufacturers and mobile carriers were typically unsupportive of third-party firmware development such as CyanogenMod.

Manufacturers expressed concern about improper functioning of devices running unofficial software and the related support costs.

As a result, technical obstacles including locked bootloaders and restricted access to root permissions were common in many devices.

However, as community-developed software has grown more popular[97][98][failed verification] and following a statement by the U.S. Library of Congress that permits "jailbreaking" mobile devices,[99] manufacturers and carriers have softened their position regarding CyanogenMod and other unofficial firmware distributions, with some, including HTC,[100] Motorola,[101] Samsung[102][103] and Sony Ericsson,[104] providing support and encouraging development.

[115][116] It was determined that the proprietary Google apps may be backed-up from the Google-supplied firmware on the phone and then re-installed onto CyanogenMod releases without infringing copyright.

On 28 September 2009, Cyanogen warned that while issues no longer remain with Google, there were still potential licensing problems regarding proprietary, closed-source device drivers.

"[119] Replicant is a CyanogenMod fork that removes all proprietary software and drivers and thus avoids all aforementioned legal issues.