At the beginning of this month when Steve Kondik finally spoke out about Kirt McMaster’s mismanagement of Cyanogen Inc, the original founder of CyanogenMod also revealed that due to branding and IP issues, CyanogenMod might need to be forked and rebranded.

While Kondik has not made any other announcement post his original rant, it looks like he has already begun work on forking and rebranding CyanogenMod. As per very close sources of Android Police, Kondik plans on forking CyanogenMod to LAOS or “Laos” which stands for Lineage Android Operating System. It’s unclear if this is the final name of the project or not, but a Github page with LineageOS name has already popped up that is actively forking bits from CyanogenMod’s repo.

We’ve heard from sources close to the project that one current internal nickname is “Laos” or LAOS, standing for Lineage Android Operating System. While the name is still subject to some debate, an official repo bearing the LineageOS name has popped up. The title on the page is Lineage Android Distribution, so perhaps LAD could be a nickname, as well.

It is likely that we will see Steve Kondik make a formal announcement about LineageOS in the coming weeks. Once LineageOS is released, it will be interesting to see how the transition process takes place and what happens to CyanogenMod itself.