Cutting Off The Root: The Future Of Community Developed Android

The CyanogenMod team made news last week when they announced that future versions of their venerable Android build would no longer include root-level access by default, a massive departure from essentially every other custom Android ROM. Some have questioned the move, claiming that removing root undermines the very idea of running a custom ROM.

What is root, and do you really need it? Is CyanogenMod setting a trend, or doing their users a disservice?

What Is Root?

The concept of “root” goes all the way back to the UNIX days, when there was no such thing as a personal computer. Computers at the time were operated on a principle known as “time-sharing“, which meant that many users and organizations had to share a single system due to the enormous costs involved. In such a scenario, it was necessary to regulate what individual users were capable of, and make sure that no normal user could make system-wide changes that could effect the other users or groups who shared time on the same machine. The only user account which could make system-wide changes on such a computer was known as “root”, and access to this account was closely guarded.

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