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I can't take this seriously when their mission statement is to "break free from Google and Apple" and their entire output is a fork of a Google repo.

If you're based on AOSP, the project is still 100% reliant on Google!

It seems extremely cynical to me to depend on the work of a thousand-man team to build your OS, then patch out a couple of lines and claim you've broken free from them. Without Google, none of this project could exist.

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You'd be pleased to hear, then, that "break free from Google and Apple" is not Graphene's mission statement, because this is a blog.

i don't understand your issue - using grapheneos does allow you to break free from google in the sense that you have an android OS that works well, is secure and private, and gives you the choice to use google or not. if you choose to use play store/services, they run as sandboxed, unprivileged applications like every other app. on samsung/stock pixels etc, play services is a privileged component of the os and you can't avoid this. grapheneos gives you the freedom to break free from it in this sense.

soon enough grapheneos will be available on non-pixel devices, but if you really have, say, a philosophical problem with using google devices, get a used 2nd hand pixel. or wait til the oem partnership announcement.

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