I don't understand why it took LineageOS so long to update to AOSP 17, while GrapheneOS managed to update to 17 in just 3 days. LineageOS really should be based directly on GrapheneOS.
Here's a hint: GrapheneOS has paid developers working on it full-time, while LineageOS is done by people in their spare time. Also, GrapheneOS has a collaboration with Motorola and through that gets for instance early access to security patches, and probably other things as well. And lastly, LineageOS supports roughly 10x the number of devices. It's significantly easier if you restrict yourself to Pixels.
Just for clarification (your points are very valid): the GrapheneOS developers have stated on several occasions that they getting embargoed patches from another OEM than Motorola.
I get the point you're trying to make, but in reality, it wouldn't be very useful. Many security features of GrapheneOS could easily be bypassed, due to flaws in LineageOS, such as the fact that they ship userdebug instead of production builds, don't really allow for bootloader relocking, etc. High-level improvements like the GrapheneOS hardened memory allocator, Auditor app (hardware-based remote attestation/device integrity monitoring), etc. are pretty useless, when the entire system has an unlocked bootloader and thus no verified boot, weakend SELinux policies due to the use of userdebug builds, etc. GrapheneOS also purposely narrows the list of supported devices for security reasons. They mandate a high-quality secure element, hardware memory tagging, etc. whereas LineageOS tries to support as many devices as possible. Those two very different philosophies simply aren't compatible.
LOS => most security, most usability, breadth of support
GrapheneOS greatly improves upon the increasingly inadequate privacy and security provided by Android. It fixes many privacy and security vulnerabilities along with adding important missing privacy and security protections.
Traditional cell phones lack any form of secure communication and are entirely dependent on cellular. Those lack basic updates and security protections in practice too. Those are the opposite of a more private and secure device. A smartphone with GrapheneOS or iOS is far more private and secure than any traditional desktop/laptop computer at a hardware, firmware and software level.
There's nothing illegal about using GrapheneOS.
GrapheneOS does not have circle battery.
> LineageOS really should be based directly on GrapheneOS.
What would that achieve?