The word KANG has been around the developer community for quite some time. Those of you that have been around the block a few times know exactly what it meant and was, while others were clueless and many were afraid to even ask. In simple terms, it was all the hard work a developer or developer team put into a ROM that another developer took and modified to their liking. Most commonly found with
CyanogenMOD, but certainly not limited to them. At least that was always my understanding of KANG. Â The world of KANGs isn’t a terrible thing. Sometimes a developer for a specific device will pull the open source build from another developer and build it for a different device, or at the very least modify it with other fixes, additions or themeing.
As a community grows, unifies and matures, words like KANG need to be put in the past. Kinda like 50-year-old guys trying to pull of the new generation slang terms like ‘pimpin’, ‘rad’, or ‘sick.’ Lat night Steve Kondik, CyanogenMOD himself, moved from the term KANG to Unofficial. Which is what it always has meant.
The loss of Kang and the end of an era
Last night, CM took a step towards leaving adolescence and becoming the distribution we all know it to be. As every product matures and becomes more successful, certain external characteristics must be let go. This terminology was one of them.
I must admit, as one of the coiners of the phrase, a single tear rolled down my cheek as I merged this change.
Kang on, old friend.
http://r.cyanogenmod.com/#change,14178
We aren’t all that sad to see the verbage disbanded by the original team that created. With so many new devices landing, developers developing and ROMs being released, a new comer can easily get lost. I can’t even tell you how many times people complained to me about a CM7 ROM and its issues only to find out the installed a KANG and not an official build. While unofficial ROM’s will always be ported and modified, at least a name that is more user-friendly and easily understood will be attached.
Via CyanogenMOD G+
