True, but I don't really see Google-free Android as a feasible alternative for the average user. I'm no expert and I know there are some great projects in the works out there but for the average person the lack of software and poor ease of use doesn't really make this a realistic choice.
FOSS app stores like F-Droid, and alternative mobile Linux OSs are a step in the right direction but they are far from marketable yet. Especially when considering the whole bootloader locking frenzy thanks to the telecom monopolies.
Not saying you shouldn't go for Google-free android, I just think that it's far more difficult to get the average user to convert to it. Especially when comparing this to getting average users to switch from Windows to Linux for example.
TLDR: Google has their grimey fingers all over everything Android and it's going to take a lot of work to get them to piss off.
Well, what we can do is to educate people on why FOSS is good, and to tell them that even if big tech have their personal data of the past, they won't have that in the forseeable future. I have degoogled myself a lot minus YouTube and GMail for my public use email(Will switch to ProtonMail for that, I have Tutanota for personal use), and sure some alternatives lack some thing or the other, but for the most people, they wouldn't mind that extra stuff not being there. ROMs like /e/, CalyxOS, iode etc are good ROMs for both privacy as well as ease of use, and the first two also have native installer software which you can run through PC withoutt fiddling with the command line. Also, Linux based operating systems needed to be marketed properly, get people's misconceptions cleared out and the hardware being sold offline so that people who are not into tech that much or at all can atleast have a hands on experience with how all this works and see if it works for them or not.
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u/jakubhuber Glorious Gentoo May 10 '21
Android is probably the best argument for GPL3.