Every Android-powered phone comes running a version of the operating system, from 1.5 (Cupcake) all the way up to 3.1 (Honeycomb).

CyanogenMod replaces that stock OS with a custom build, letting you make adjustments to your phone that the official version prevents. It opens the door to more sophisticated custom wallpaper, changing the graphic that appears when the phone boots up, or more significantly, tethering your laptop to your phone’s data connection. With CyanogenMod installed, you can even overclock your phone’s CPU, so you can wring every last drop of processing power from it.

“You can customize the hell out of it,” says Steve Kondik, founder of the CyanogenMod project.

How a Hack Got its Start

Of course, it all began with a phone.

Debuting in 2007 as the flagship device for Google’s Android mobile platform, HTC’s G1 smartphone was the alternative to Apple’s immensely popular iPhone.

The G1 — also known as the HTC Dream — could be easily rooted, which meant giving you superuser access to the phone’s naughty bits. Essentially, it made customizing your G1 as easy as pie.

Steve Kondik had been waiting for a phone like the G1 for a long time.

“I had followed a few other Linux-based phones before,” says Kondik, citing offerings from Motorola and Nokia, “but they never had the sort of momentum that a company like Google could bring.”

And Google’s philosophy fit with what Kondik, a software developer working for a mobile content delivery company in Pittsburgh, was looking for: a more “open” platform for coders coming from a background in open source code, like Linux. Android, after all, is built on the Linux kernel.

‘You can customize the hell out of it.’

After each version of Android was made available for download to the public, Google published all of the code to an online repository called Github, free for all to poke, prod and play around with. Developers could take any and all of that code and modify it to their heart’s desire.

Which is exactly what Kondik proceeded to do. “I had been using desktop Linux for ages,” he says, “and I just tried using some of those concepts to tweak the code. I had no idea what I actually wanted to do with the phone.”

After finishing his first version of CyanogenMod, Kondik posted the file to XDA forums, a popular message board in the Android modding community. “All of a sudden, my single-page thread is one hundred pages long,” Kondik says.

Cyanogen Comes of Age

CyanogenMod was a hit. It racked up downloads from community members, each expressing how they liked the amount of control they finally had over their phones.

“As a mobile enthusiast, I like the ability to make changes to the way that my operating system runs,” says Chris Soyars, who works on CyanogenMod.

In essence, CyanogenMod’s popularity can be attributed to the very thing that draws so many to the Android platform: openness, flexibility, control. The Google-led Open Handset Alliance — a coalition of 80 carriers, manufacturers and tech companies all backing the Android platform — espouses these principles, as seen in the Open Source Project mission statement: “We wanted to make sure that there would always be an open platform available for carriers, OEMs and developers to use to make their innovative ideas a reality.”

Apple, on the other hand, fought aggressively to outlaw the practice of jailbreaking its phones, which is akin to rooting an Android device. Apple ultimately lost the battle in federal court, so iPhone users are free to jailbreak their phones, though they don’t have access to the operating system’s underlying source code to the same extent Android users do.

While Apple’s controlling, “walled garden” approach has obviously worked well for the company — the company has sold 100 million iPhones as of March of this year — Android has become the alternative solution for geeks and hackers who want more control over their devices.

For many, CyanogenMod is the key to unlocking that control.