OnePlus has not opensourced OxygenOS: Updated

UPDATE: The author of the original article at XDA apologised about the mistake of interpreting the GitHub activity as OnePlus making it open source. He added  “Yesterday, we pushed out an article where we claimed that OnePlus had open sourced OxygenOS. The basis of our claim was the recent activity on OnePlus’s GitHub. What happened, in fact was that OnePlus released the device tree and some HALs for the OnePlus 2. This is still big news by itself, as it will be of great use for 3rd party development efforts on the OnePlus 2.” OnePlus has announced that it is going to open source its in-house Android fork – Oxygen OS. This move comes right before the launch of the OnePlus 3, the latest flagship device by the company and can be linked to the fact that OnePlus wants all the additional help and inputs in improving the experience of the OS that will drive its device lineup. Making the custom skin of Android shipping on OnePlus devices means a huge deal for the developers who can now go to GitHub and download the source code to make their own fork of OxygenOS, bring modifications to the OS and even fix the problems that have not been fixed by the company. You can request the company for a pull request and OnePlus after reviewing the code can choose to include the fix in the next update. Another benefit of the code being available for everyone to view and download is that one can improve and add on the features on to the base code of OxygenOS and create their own custom ROM offering. This move as reported by XDA.com, was taken positively across the developer community which could not wait to see the upcoming custom ROMs available on the OnePlus device family. OnePlus is engaging the developer community with full force after the OnePlus One where flashing or unlocking the device was easier and did not void the warranty of the device. They want to claim the throne of the most developer friendly device out there as they did with the OnePlus One. However, the timing of the announcement looks a bit suspicious to some as it aligns with Paranoid Android, another extremely popular custom ROM group returning to the scene.