Cyanogen Incorporation abruptly pulled the plug on its support for CyanogenOS in a short post declaring all services and Cyanogen-supported nightly builds will be discontinued by this year's end. The company that started way back in 2013, carrying the idea for taking the vibrant world of Android modifications and turn them into an OS and a viable business.

In a post today which entitled "A Fork in the Road," the team behind CyanogenMod recognized the pre-holiday announcement effectively amounts to a "Shut Down" for their project. The custom services which Cyanogen provides to phones that run its OS will be shut down on Dec. 31, 2016 and the "nightly builds" of its OS will no longer be produced.

"In addition to infrastructure being retired, we in the CyanogenMod (CM) community have lost our voice in the future direction of CM, the brand could be sold to a third party entity as it was an asset that Kondik risked to start his business and dream. Even if we were to regroup and rebuild our own infrastructure, continuing development of CM would mean to operate with the threat of sale of the brand looming over our heads," the company wrote in a post.

Steve Kondik, the technical and spiritual heart of Cyanogen, left the company after expressing his disgust at its management. Employees have been laid off as the company relocated.

Word of Lineage started cropping up a few weeks back, after Cyanogen Incorporation secretly separated severed ties with co-founder, Steve Kondik. The CyanogenMod team says that it's more than just a rebranding attempt.

"This fork will return to the grassroots community effort that used to define CyanogenMod while maintaining the professional quality and reliability you have come to expect more recently," the team said.