The situation surrounding MIUI4DX
Posted on
July 20, 2011
They day CyanogenMod hit the Droid X, was the day we broke free of the Motorola chains. CyanogenMod breathed new life in my otherwise useless for homebrew device. I immediately wanted to start development on something. So I started reading about 2nd-init. That helped me understand allot, and further pushed me to start thinking about development. I decided I have had the ability to port, or even build something of my own from source, but still no idea what I wanted to do.
One day I was sitting in #cvpcs on freenode, when TreyM came in talking about how is attempting to develop MIUI on the Droid X. Now this closed-source, iOS-esque ROM is not one of my favorites, but it’s pretty popular on the devices that it’s on, and there seemed to be a demand for it. So when TreyM asked, I happily agreed to test. (He did not have a Droid X.) We did not test much as TreyM had to stop development due to personal reasons. In his absence I decided that I would pick up development. From there I went into several IRC rooms to get advice on what to do. Many people suggested that I start with the Defy version of MIUI as a base. ( Due to similarities in the hardware.) So once I put together the necessary files to start a flashable test, I started to get more people offering help. One of those people were a person named Framework. At the time Framework did not own a Droid X (Somewhere in the mix someone donates one to him). He was actually “blind” developing for the Droid 2. So for whatever reason Framework decided to stop development on the Droid 2, and switch over to the Droid X.. So we collaborated on the X for a while, even getting BootMenu on it. (Which later was found to not be necessary.) A week into development it started become very hard to contact Framework. When I did get into contact with him he wouldn’t give me much info about development, or he would stop responding in the middle of my questions. I was a bit irritated, but people have lives, and I had no idea what was happening in his. While all of this was happening I had setup a thread on RootzWiki with every test that we had made, with changelogs and updates on the project. So after several days of not hearing anything about development I start seeing more and more about this being Frameworks project in various IRC rooms, and on twitter. Then in that thread that I mentioned earlier, Framework posts a link to his twitter, with a supposed screenshot of MIUI on the Droid X. It irritated me to see him posting in my thread about something that he did not update me on, even after I’ve tried contacting him. Now this is where I start getting a little suspicious. I keep trying to contact him and get nowhere. It seems like he’s ignoring me. Finally I get a hold of him, and I ask if I could get the latest booting zip. He tells me no, he’s not releasing to anyone until he fixes a few things. From this point he turns me down whenever I ask. This is getting a bit irritating seeing as how I released every one of my tests publicly, and we even collaborated. Out of spite I state on twitter that the MIUI project has been stolen from me. I see a user named G7man in #cvpcs giving Framework a logcat. So I PM G7man asking him if he had been talking to Framework, and saying that it seemed like he had been ignoring me. G7man says he knows, leading me to think that Framework and him had talked about what I said on twitter. I deiced to confront Framework about all of this. Here is the log of our conversation:
[12:16] <Webst3r> The only reasoj I was upset was because I didnt get chnace to - Pastebin.com . I explained that I was irritated that he had been leaving me out of development. He explained that he thought were getting no where together, and the HE felt left out of development in the beginning. In the beginning he did not even own the phone, so naturally I would not pay as much attention to him. He also explained that I was not sharing. Even though I posted every test we ever made ever in the RootzWiki thread. Even through all of this I explained that he did a great job. Which is very, very true. He got it to boot, that’s awesome! I was just sad that he left me out of development. If he thought that I was not sharing, or if there we any problems he should have contacted me. It would have been the adult thing to do, and I would have been more than happy to sort things about. If he had asked, and I didn’t want to change, then he would have every right to leave. But would have never happened.
By the end of our conversation I asked if we could just settle this and get back into development. He never responded. Even if he’s busy it would be nice to not leave me hanging after a conversion like that. At least get back to me. Again I try contacting him, and no luck. I’m still hearing that this is his project. I asked a voiced user in #miui-us if he could talk to Framework to figure this all out. After a while I catch up with the user, and he says that me and Framework are apparently now on good terms. Contacting Framework is still getting nowhere. Finally I get a hold of him, and he will still not release the latest MIUI to me. So I decided just completely forget about Framework. He complained about me not sharing, and then does not share. He wants to keep these things to himself until they’re ready.
I would never hold back what I was working on. I want every user to be on the same page that I am. I don’t care if it boots or not. Whatever zip I’m on is the zip that the community is going to get. I don’t care about money, or credit. I wanted to do something cool. It was my first chance to port something. But because Framework did not want to talk the situation over, he decided to abandon me.
I could have worked on the project without him, but he already had it booting by the time I realized that he intentionally was ignoring me. I spent the time I could have been working on MIUI, trying to fix things between me and Framework. I don’t like drama, I never wanted it come to this. But I want people to know what happened. I will do my best to get MIUI booting. And if it boots, you will get it the second it does. I will not make you wait.
If MIUI does not work out, I’ll be working on Sense on the X. Stay tuned.
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