CyanogenMod project appeals for help - Update

The CyanogenMod project, which produces the most popular alternative ROMs for Android smartphones and other devices, has lost access to a large compute cluster which is used to create over fifty builds a day.

According to a message on the project's blog, it has been without this access for "quite some time", but with CyanogenMod 7.2 "ready to go" and the approaching release of CyanogenMod 9, the situation is now described as "quite a bit of a mess". Given that the nightly builds are the second most popular of all the CyanogenMod releases, the developers think they need to acquire sufficient hardware to rebuild their build system; the shopping list appears to be "a couple of solid, stable Xeon-class servers with large amounts of RAM and fast disks".

After discounting the possibility of charging for access to nightly builds, as it would likely increase the number of variably broken unofficial builds, and of using hosted virtual machines, as they "won't cut it for build machines", the project has decided to appeal for donations to help fund the purchase of new hardware. A PayPal link has been set up on the bottom of all the pages of Cyangenmod.com for those interested in contributing.

Update - "I am absolutely amazed at the support we have just been shown" says a new posting on the CyanogenMod blog announcing that they have already reached their goal "and maybe a bit more". It took only eight hours to raise the money which means the project will be purchasing new Xeon-class servers next week and plan to have builds going again "soon".

(djwm)