Developers behind the CyanogenMod platform have made an important announcement.

They are going to ship their future public builds with root disabled. This is an optional setting that can be changed by the user.

The developers said:

At CyanogenMod, security has always been one of our primary concerns; however, we were hesitant to make a change that might disrupt the current root ecosystem. With CyanogenMod 9 we have the opportunity to do things better, whether it’s the code in the OS, UI/UX, or security – we are taking this time to do things with a fresh approach.

Shipping root enabled by default to 1,000,000+ devices was a gaping hole. With these changes we believe we have reached a compromise that allows enthusiasts to keep using root if they so desire but also provide a good level of security to the majority of users.

Users would have the following options for root:

Disabled
Enabled for ADB only
Enabled for Apps only
Enabled for both