Android used to be synonymous with freedom. If you didn’t like your phone’s interface or bloatware, you could simply install a custom ROM — the colloquial term for a forked version of the Android operating system. But that golden era is quickly disappearing, as yet another major Android fork has run into troubles.
CalyxOS, a major privacy-focused Android distribution, announced a sudden freeze on future releases earlier this month. While the project isn’t dissolving entirely, it won’t receive any updates for the foreseeable future. That news coincided with the departure of two of the project’s most recognizable leaders. Needless to say, zero security updates would be a death knell for any operating system, but it’s even more problematic for a privacy-focused Android fork.