Cyanogen had nothing to do with why Samsung’s interface improved and why OneUI is good now. He was at Samsung for less than two years and it was during the TouchWiz era. He left Samsung and almost immediately trashed TouchWiz on the S4. I loved CyanogenMod, but OneUI (and Samsung Experience before it) was forced by the competition’s Android skins getting better, not custom ROMs. So, I agree with everything else you said though.
Cyanogen had nothing to do with why Samsung’s interface improved and why OneUI is good now. He was at Samsung for less than two years and it was during the TouchWiz era. He left Samsung and almost immediately trashed TouchWiz on the S4. I loved CyanogenMod, but OneUI (and Samsung Experience before it) was forced by the competition’s Android skins getting better, not custom ROMs. So, I agree with everything else you said though.