The CyanogenMod Team has been a major force driving the AOSP, rooting, and ROMing community forward with over a million devices running their custom ROMs. With this announcement from team member Koush (Koushik Dutta) the creator of ClockworkMod of a CyanogenMod App Store, there appears to be no slowing down.
What they intend to do is create a well maintained market for all the apps that many of us use, but aren’t allowed in the official Android Market for various reasons. These apps include easy rooting methods, tethering apps, Roms and themes plus much more. I know there are a number of users that would benefit from having all of these items available from controlled central market with the most up to date versions, clear change logs, and reviews.
Rooting which gives users complete control over their own devices, has continued to become more mainstream with easier and more reliable methods being developed so the audience for these apps is only going to continue to increase with time. Koush tried to go to other avenues before deciding to take the project on as he apparently approached Amazon to have these apps in their app store only to be turned down. He explained his thoughts on why we need app store in the following G+ post
Koush’s Google+ Post
Apps removed from the Market includes, one click root apps, emulators, tether apps, Visual Voicemail apps, and more. These are all completely legal (Nintendo emulators are fine, ROMs are NOT, there is a distinction).” “I’ve been bouncing this idea around for a while now, and it seems like an even better idea now, given my recent brush with this problem: we need an App Store for root apps. We also need an app store for apps that are getting shut down for no good reason, other than carrier, or some random corporation doesn’t like it.
CyanogenMod App Store
As you can see in the following picture they are already underway on developing their new app store. If you have used any of the Cyanogen’s teams software before you know it is very high quality, so it may be a little while before its opened. When it is made available though we can be sure to expect a top notch one stop shop for all things root and more. What do you think about the CyanogenMod App Store is it a good idea?