OnePlus is known for being developer friendly from the inception. Releasing timely kernel source codes to shipping easily unlockable bootloader: they satisfy all requirements, albeit there were minor hiccups sometimes.

Not limited to those, OnePlus even cherry picked (excuse the pun) handful of distinguished devs from the community and provided them free test devices for aftermarket development.

Things were going well, but the Android modding community was shattered when OnePlus abruptly shut down this developer seeding program in November 2018.

The creator of Magisk, John Wu / topjohnwu and other developers publicly disclosed the incident on Twitter.

Android enthusiasts, especially OnePlus users were dazzled by the state of affairs. Eminent developers like Dees_Troy (the lead developer of TWRP), Francisco Franco (the man behind Franco kernel) or eng.stk (the developer of blu_spark goodies) were clueless as the internal Slack group perished. The devs lost the direct communication channel with OnePlus, as reported by XDA.

OnePlus-Development-Program-Closure
Click/Tap to zoom (Image source: XDA)

Later on the Shenzhen based company issued a statement to XDA, calling the suspension ‘temporary’:

Apologies, we weren’t as clear as we could have been. We’ve temporarily scaled back our developer program while we work out how to make it even better in the future. We’ll be updating the selection criteria and communication channels with developers in our seeding program for better co-operation. We will restart the program and select Devs based on the new criteria and will work on providing the best possible support to community development efforts for OnePlus devices.

Well, looks like the statement was not just a makeshift one. Developers are now getting OnePlus 6T from OnePlus, as it seems that the dev seeding program revived!

OK guys, Oneplus kindly sent me a 6T, I can now test stuff properly and support the device officially.
Stay tuned

(Posted by eng.stk)

https://twitter.com/franciscof_1990/status/1091370706443661312
Funk Wizard, another prominent community member and XDA forum moderator, cited one of his older posts about the temporary suspension and posted the following:

For those who felt i was bluffing

Developer Program Revived | People on the list would start receiving the devices from today

We are still not sure whether they are sticking with the old selected group of developers or have changed the roster. Anyway, expect more officially supported custom kernels, ROMs and mods without weird glitches.

Well, all’s well that ends well. Guess OnePlus doesn’t want to settle things. #NeverSettle

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Kingshuk De
896 Posts

I came from a mixed background of Statistics and Computer Science. My research domains included embedded computer systems, mobile computing and delay tolerant networks in post-disaster scenarios. Apart from tinkering with gadgets or building hackintosh, I like to hop on various subreddits and forums like MyDigitalLife and XDA.

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