OnePlus initially found its niche by appealing to hardcore Android enthusiasts. Over the years, the company's phones have always had a strong ROM/kernel development scene. OnePlus even sent free devices to popular developers — until now, that is.

Several notable developers, including John Wu (Creator of Magisk) and Francisco Franco (creator of Franco Kernel), revealed on Twitter that OnePlus has ended its developer seeding program. We've reached out to the company for comment, but we have not received a response yet.

OnePlus isn't the only major Android device manufacturer stepping away from the development community. Huawei halted its bootloader unlock program earlier this year, even though the company sent phones to prominent ROM and kernel developers a few months prior.

This isn't a surprising move by OnePlus — the company is moving its focus towards carrier partnerships (and 4K TVs), and the number of people who purchase a phone based on what ROMs are available is relatively minuscule.

It's difficult to predict how ending the developer program will affect future ROM/kernel development for OnePlus phones, but my guess is that not much will change. There was an active development scene before the program came into being, and plenty of other phones (like the Pixel 2 XL) have ROMs and kernels without any help from the manufacturer.

UPDATE: 2018/11/29 8:57am PST BY STEPHEN SCHENCK

A new statement issued by a spokesperson asserts that OnePlus is still very interested in maintaining a good relationship with developers, and that the company's working now to retool the process through which it interacts with them:

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.

UPDATE: 2019/02/04 2:56am PST BY SCOTT SCRIVENS

OnePlus developer program is back up and running

According to our friends at XDA Developers, the OnePlus developer program is once again underway, with several participating devs confirming that they've received a OnePlus 6T from the company. Apparently, the pool of chosen devs will be smaller this time around, but it's still great to hear that OnePlus has restored the program.

Source: XDA Developers