Android Soap Opera: Ultimate Droid
April 14th, 2010 | 
Author: I try really hard to stay out of “forum wars”, but this whole thing with Ultimate Droid really got to me.
Some backstory..
Koush, who works mainly with the Droid side of CyanogenMod (amongst other things like Clockwork Recovery) is the author of the ROM Manager application that makes it super easy to manage your backups and ROM library. About a month a go, the author of “Ultimate Droid” asked to be included in the ROM library. Something changed his mind, and he posted on the CM forums that Koush was only in it for money and wanted to be removed from ROM Manager (post ended up eventually deleted as the ROM was available as a free download). They also blamed ROM Manager as the source of many problems with their ROM.
This wasn’t that big of a deal, and I really didn’t know much about Ultimate Droid until I learned about all the new features in Ultimate Droid 10, which looked suspiciously similar to CyanogenMod.
So I downloaded it.
What I found was that UD10 was almost entirely based off of CM source code, and even included the many stupid little easter eggs like the KMFDM quote on startup. I decompiled some code to see if various parts were the same, and yes, they were. Now, CM follows the same licensing rules as Android itself, the APL (Apache Public License) which means that anyone is free to use the code in pretty much any way they see fit. What the UD guys did was perfectly fine. I *love* when people use CM source as a starting point- we put a lot of effort into making it build for actual devices, and there’s tons of extra goodies in there from so many people.
Here’s where I get annoyed. Not only did this guy rant on our forums and others about Koush, he doesn’t even acknowledge our hard work in his release notes. Not a single mention. He doesn’t have to do this, but dissing us and then doing it? I see that as highly unethical. There are a lot of people behind CyanogenMod (and Google! and HTC! and Qualcomm! etc!) who write code, handle bug reports, make graphics, maintain the forums, etc etc. We work hard, and Ultimate Droid went out of the way to deny this or any association with us.
So I signed up for his “home” forum and called him out on it.
My original deleted post
WootRoot’s collage of all the deleted posts
Blackdroid and the mods at this forum were VERY quick to delete posts. This got everyone on IRC/Twitter annoyed and a “zerg rush” ensued. My account was banned, and then IP banned (don’t really care about this because I had never even visited the site before yesterday).
I do this Android stuff for a few reasons.. it’s a lot of fun, there’s a zillion things to work on, it’s open source, and the community is awesome. There’s also the matter of “geek cred”, you could say. CM has an *extensive* CHANGELOG with due credits, and all authorship information is also retained in our git repositories. So for me, this was kind of like getting spit on, then kicked in the nuts.
It’s not the first time that this particular ROM has had problems. They were banned from Alldroid for the same thing, and were also called out for pirating some of the top apps on the Android Market.
I had some talks with the mods at this particular forum about the situation and sent out a tweet that they were trying to do the right thing. The mods locked Blackdroid’s section of the forum and promised that they would investigate the claims. Two of the mods dropped by our IRC channel and we had a nice civilized chat about the situation.
Today, they are demanding a formal apology from me. I called out the “author” of this ROM, not their forum. It’s not my fault that the community takes this stuff seriously. Android is open-source, it’s so easy to do way more useful things than just copy/pasting the work of others. The only thing I’d like to apologize to them for is for hurting their ad-click revenue by exposing the biggest draw to their forum as a fraud.
edit! 7:00pm
Just to clear a couple things up- I have no issue with Droidforums, just Ultimate Droid. I did react hastily and could have been more tactful.
Also, since an Ultimate Droid developer has come in here and denied the claims that *anything* from CM was involved and all proper attributions were given, I decided to call upon the #teamdouche in myself. I looked for the first thing that popped into my head.
Here’s the resources I added for one of my favorite features (that used to be a bug!)- it requires you to unlock the screen (if you have pattern-lock enabled) to snooze your alarm. This particular feature is near and dear to my heart and has kept me from being fired. A joke was made that there should be an API exposed for this feature, so that you could make it ask you to do long division or recite the alphabet backwards to make your alarm shut up.
This particular commit can be found here: Part two in the “wake my lazy ass up series”. Add option to require
keyguard unlock to dismiss or snooze alarm. (sorry, I messed up the import order plz don’t beat me Google)
If you were to run this command on this apk if built from Google source, nothing would be returned.
shade@toxygene:~/ud/app$ aapt d resources DeskClock.apk | grep unlock spec resource 0×7f080038 com.android.deskclock:string/alarm_requires_unlock_title: flags=0×00000000 spec resource 0×7f080039 com.android.deskclock:string/alarm_requires_unlock_summary: flags=0×00000000 resource 0×7f080038 com.android.deskclock:string/alarm_requires_unlock_title: t=0×03 d=0×00000416 (s=0×0008 r=0×00) resource 0×7f080039 com.android.deskclock:string/alarm_requires_unlock_summary: t=0×03 d=0×00000417 (s=0×0008 r=0×00)
I hope this clears things up. Just a simple nod, tip of the hat, or *thanks bro* would be swell.
edit: taxday 9:19am
Jeagoss and TheDude did an md5sum check between all files in CM vs. UD. The more interesting stuff is in the system libs because APKs won’t have the same md5sums after being themed.
Another hilarious edit
I promise I won’t kick anymore salt in this wound (or will I?) because it’s not really necessary. But just to take it to the next level, UD10 includes the /system/bin/recovery file, which if you dump the strings from it, it’s Koush’s Clockwork Recovery binary (it’s part of the CM source) 
shade@discord:~/ud/bin$ strings recovery | grep -i clock /sdcard/clockworkmod/backup/ /sdcard/clockworkmod/backup/%d /sdcard/clockworkmod/backup/%F.%H.%M.%S ClockworkMod Recovery v1.8.0.6
edit again!
Blackdroid has made his triumphant return! It’s deletion city over there. Most posts are deleted within minutes. Refuses to acknowledge anyone or the existence of the spreadsheet above and all evidence for our cause was deleted. I asked their staff to delete my account. Forget that place.
106 Responses to “Android Soap Opera: Ultimate Droid”
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- @voiceofid yeah its all sausage
- @SportsDebate its being worked on, I don't know the status right now sorry
- @androidbeanie no, she wont be able to make it
- @androidbeanie she says green and is super excited
- @androidbeanie medium noggin
- @androidbeanie awesome, I fear my wife may hijack it :)
- @raymondhu its most likely outdated or modified gapps causing it.
- @kingklick92 yep
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ulitmate droid? more like ULTIMATE DONT! am i rite? i am rite.
that sucks. you called him out on his immature disrespectful shens and now its all foopy. nuts to them, nuts i say.
Even though what you do is APL-licensed and what not, I do agree that what these “developers” did was and is highly unethical. That the forum moderators took side with them is even weirder, but hey it’s their forum and their decision.
Wasn’t clear from the article though, did the “developers” and the ROM get banned or do they still side with them?
Keep it up and don’t let idiots get you down, love your ROMs!
Here Here, I don’t care when people copy and paste, as long as credit is given.
As far as the Koush issue, obviously someone is just a big baby and doesn’t want people to have his ROM LOL
I’d like to say that I’m shocked by this but seen too much of this before.
Don’t ever apologise for doing the right thing, and you are completely in the right here.
poison the milk.
I’m proud of the CM community for standing up for itself. This is a sure way to weed out the frauds and slackers, and hopefully, this will make others think twice before attempting something like UD10 did. Keep up the great work.
Wow. I have so much more respect for you guys.
Android for life.
Cyanogen for life.
N1 kick ass!
Cyanogen…you did the right thing here and handled it like a professional. If the owners/Mods of DroidForum dont want to own up to the fact that they are posting pirated work, then so be it. Anyone that knows anything about Android knows where the quality work comes from. There are few real devs in our community, but a whole lot of cut and pasters that steal others work. You could look at it this way……At least they are stealing from the best. Keep doing your thing man……cause we all appreciate the work the CM community puts in.
Demanding a formal apology? What a joke.
Your original post was civilized, reasonable and clear. It should never have been deleted in the first place.
The decision to block you from voicing your understandable point of view, got them into trouble. That they now expect you, of all people, to apologise only shows a lack of understanding of the situation, and seems to validate the many complaints about droidforums.net moderation in general.
Do not apologize! Not even a little. UD’s people back in your forums attempting a reconciliation, should be left out in the cold with an iphone!
DroidForums should be blackballed within the android community especially their mouthpieces, sam, miami, etc
id say have an encrypted check in one of the files to see if the rom name is cyanogen. not only that, but don’t share that file’s source, and have it load at startup. security ftw
This is epic. They must have had hundreds more hits over the last few days than ever before and all people telling them what pricks they are being.
I don’t think anyone is going to be supporting that site for much longer.
Thanks for putting out your side of the story. I think you handled yourself very well. As far as I can tell they owe you an apology, not the other way around.
I just started using CM on my N1 last week and I am hooked. Keep up the good work.
DroidForums Sucks donkey ballZ.
Carry on.
lol f*** that! you don’t owe them shit! CM FTW!!!
You did absolutely nothing wrong by calling DarkDroid out. The public needed to know that he was not responible for UD10 and that you and your many helpers (for lack of a better word) are responsible for it. You exposed a fraud, plain and simple. If there’s anything that this community speaks up about it is lack of crediting the devs.
Kudos and Keep up the Good Work.
Copy & Paste rules the world.
I love the drama. Blackdroid is still in denial, he was asked on IRC last night if he copied Cyanogen.. guess what he said? He said, NO he coded everything himself including the vendors, fixing launcher2, and everything on Cyanogen’s changelogs. ROFLMFAO!
The kid can go on and go.
Don’t f*** with Cyanogen.
People taking your work, not giving you credit, and then claiming it for their own? Though it sucks, it’s always a bit flattering.
…the first few times it happens.
Normally I don’t mess around with forum drama, having caused enough of it back in my younger, more foolish days. I have to say this though:
I am a developer of both Android application and Java code in general, so I’m aware of what it means to pour your heart into something only to not only have it stolen, and not receiving credit for your work, but to also be publicly shamed for it in someone else’s forum. Honestly, it pissed me off when Cyanogen posted all of this on his Twitter, and I’m still kind of steamed about it now.
Now that I think about it, I’m glad I picked the right side of the fence long ago when I had my ADP1 and chose Cyanogenmod.
I appreciate the hard work you guys do and I can’t wait to see what you have for us in the future!
Oh, one more thing…isn’t there a clause in the APL that stipulates that anyone that uses your APL’d code HAS TO credit you in their NOTICE file?
At the very least some people have been given a real look at those douchebags. I still think koush should change the UD subtext in rom manager to read ” if you like to eat bowls of dicks”
$hame$hame on the “auhor”!!!!-no respect of anything and I cant belive that UltimateDroid Members werent aware if this shit*
I havent modded my phone yet, but looking around, one thing is clear … Cyanogen is the maker of the only MOD that I will use when I get around to modding my phone. The open source community evolves around giving credit where its due and Cyanogen and his team deserve all the android mod credit I can muster up!
Blackdroid is a ultimate douche and so is the staff at that forum. Bunch of clowns. They say they delete the posts because it hurts the community, bullshit! They delete it because they don’t want to anyone to know the truth about their precious baby blackdroid. Haha blackball blackdroid, who’s with me?
I stand behind you and cyanogenmod!
And now I know which Android Site I never will join
Ultimate Droid = Epic Fail
Cyanogen, the way you handle yourself is very professional and you owe no apology.
Long live CM!!!!
Just can say… CM, we all know what you’ve done for this community and that there’s so many people involved doing a hard and great job, just keep going! At the end everyone will know who is the real author
A suggestion to CyanogenMod, release the next update as closed source explicitly with sustainably more features and functions. This shows if those guys are able to copy or not..
I stand behind the one and only CM ROMs. Don’t waste your mental energy on idiots that lie, cheat and steal to boost their ego. We know where the real work happened/happens, thanks to your transparency, and the users of your ROM are loyal for that reason. You do solid work. Ignore the dum dums…life moves onward!
an apology??? LMAO!!! he should apologize to you. I want to punch him for you… hes not the type that understands words…
but i heard hes hungry for knuckle-sandwiches…
besides my little humor, all jokes aside…. THE REAL JOKE IS when it becomes “UTIMATE VOID” ….
I agree, UD is nothing but a big hassle. I have used nothing but Cyanogen for droid and Rom Manager Premium since i found it and wont use anything else. Its the most stable and friendly community as well. So Cyanogen and Koush, keep up the awseome work and i will always continue to support as long as you have a ROM on whatever phone im using (Droid)
And to note, if you havent already, I dont know why you dont remove UD from RM. That many more people that wont have access to that junk and warez he puts on his roms.
I was using blackdroid for quite a while, and after he made is post about the bid decision to not support ROM Manager anymore, without knowing any of the story, i recognized that he was likely the one at fault. I didnt like the whole situation, so i stopped using “his” rom and switched to to JRummy’s, and am totally happy.
One thing I will say about the android community in general, there are way too many kids with big soap boxes…
I appreciate all of what you guys do, keep up the good work!
Well within your rights to demand a little common decency and satisfaction, given their classless maneuvers.
Thank you for a great free product, and for constantly giving credit to the people who work with you on it!
Hey man, if you argue if an idiot, he’s probably doing the same. So just let it go. They’ll never taste your glory. Cyanogen is the best!
shit. I give Cyanogen credit even if i don’t use his stuff. He invented Android, HTC and the web right?
I can’t believe they demanded an apology
Pretty ridiculous that they are asking for an apology from you.
Sadly their moderators are pretty good are removing information that reveals the truth so I doubt that they will see much in negative consequences from it.
As we speak BD is no doubt scrubbing anything from “his ROM” that would prove it’s ripped from CM, he will release a new version and continue to claim it as his own work and most people on that forum will be none the wiser because anyone who points out the truth will have their post deleted for “flaming” and be banned.
those guys WISH they were you, cy!
deleting posts?
what are they, a communist state?
As soon as a site starts to sensor arbitrary harmless stuff and manipulate the history, it looses credibility. I can’t see anything wrong with Cyanogen calling Ultimate Droid out, nor am I surprised at the community reaction to Droid Forum’s questionable behavior and unreasonable demands.
I hope it will cause a huge backlash. It takes no genius to know that one should never bite the hand that feeds you. What a bunch of bozos. I laugh with Cyanogen.
What a bunch of losers, I will only use Cyanogen because he is the best, period. Cyanogen, you have all my respect for the fact that you are always willing to be civil and keep a cool head. 90% of devs wouldn’t have been able to calmly work with Google like you did when there was the whole cease and desist thing, they would have just fizzled or cussed them out. Always remember you’ve got loyal supporters!
Dude, you f*n rock. All of you. Great work, f*k them.
We stand by you Cyan.
Good job, calling them rascals out.
Cheers
Guys, I wanted to post in here and clear up some information.
It was never the policy of the Administration team or Moderation team that Cyanogen needed to apologize or that we deserved one.
DroidForums.net is our home and of course sometimes we get emotional about it and people on the team feel the same way, I understand that but it doesn’t make it right.
As far as the censoring/nazi/deleting posts, etc. A user registered on the site and made a flaming type post, it wasn’t from a regular member so to the team it looked like trolling. If you’ve ever run a large forum you will know that it happens all the time and the worst thing you can do is continue to feed the troll and allow him to get attention which is what he craves.
In this case, the first post was a legitimate cyanogen pointing out some problems with the BD release.
Once we were alerted to this we started investigating the matter and have shut the section down until the situation can resolve itself between the parties involved. Mainly BlackDroid and Cyanogen and/or the Android Community.
Getting mad at DroidForums.net for hosting the ROM to me is a bit like getting mad at Github for hosting content as well.
We don’t inspect everything we host, we have never turned down a ROM maker/Android Developer, and we try to open up sections for anyone who produces content at their request.
We don’t take sides, we simply try to offer choice to the community.
We’ve never stolen content/code.
As soon as we were alerted to the problem and we had time to verify the claims made, we took action. To take action before we had any proof would not be fair to anyone we host, it would amount to essentially allowing anyone to DOS-attack the developers.
I’ve emailed Cyanogen back and forth and told him he doesn’t need to apologize and that we would be glad to have him on the site and that I would be happy to unban his IP address but I’ve not heard back.
I can understand his frustration just as I feel that my frustration at being “zerg attacked” simply for trying to host stuff for the community is not unjustified.
Hope this helps to clear up some of the matter.
Hey, I stand by your work CYAN.
You’re one of the best.
Yea yea yea , w/e droidforums. You know now, at least you should if you “investigated” it, that it WAS and IS Cyans work. With no credit given to him.
Don’t worry Cyanogen, all of us real android users, ya know.. the ones who’ve been using your mods since only couple months after the G1′s release, know who you are and LOVE you for it!
WE STAND BEHIND YOU! #TEAMANDROID FTW
i just wanna make it clear that i have added all credit to where credit is do. credit will be added for a cyanogenmod xml thats was left in the build from testing purposes. this is all bc of that 1 xml, there is nothing else specific to cyanogenmod that is in UD 10.0. the reason they look similar is we used googles source code for the ere27 base, not cyanogens. there is none of the cyanogenmod extras or specifics to that rom in ud 10.0. just one xml. if you dont believe me rip apart ud 10.0, someone besides cyanogen and see for yourself. i can present everylink used for the open source code and not one goes back to cyanogenmod. so if he wants to claim were ripping him off someone better email google and let them know they ripped cyanogen off too by using the ere27 code!
i have nothing but repspect for cyanogen and koush for what they have done for the community. they have made ground breaking things happen and its really is awesome they are around doing all this for everyone. my outburst post at koush before was uncalled for and wrong. im man enough to say im wrong for what i did. we all make mistakes.
as far as this mistake thats happened all credit has been giving now, a channel log will be made so this doesnt happen again.
as per johndroid posts i was in the chat with them last night and no one said that anyone was gonna ask for an apology or thats what was wanted.
Steve,
Your efforts (and I mean that *broadly* for all of the others behind the scenes without ‘names’) have almost singlehandedly brought Android up out of the state that it was in at the outset. I was sorely disappointed with countless ‘features’ (or rather lack thereof) at it’s initial inception. I seriously almost went back to a Sidekick or a Blackberry, because it did not do what I expected or wanted. After discovering JF way back, and watching it evolve into what it is now in addition to what it has spawned, I am amazed…Very nice work. Everyone involved.
I, for one, laugh at these imbecilic children, their tirades, censorship, and ESPECIALLY the audacity that they must have to STEAL from our biggest advocates/developers and then demand an apology. Silly fools and their silly games… To hell with UD, and droidforums. CM shall overcome!!
/yawn..
Srtfool, I heard the new version Cyanogen fixed MMS, and ##Program.. Hopefully that’s fixed in your upcoming version. We’ll be waiting for it, we know you guys are hard at work.
Keep up the good work.