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I think we are still miscommunicating, partly due to my fault.

There's not tons of use for a workspace here, or at least not in my personal experience. Its my phone, my phone IS my workspace.

When I said "workspaces" what I meant is a "Work Profile" - you know, the kind of thing you manage with the shelter app and that companies use MDM for to manage their company-specific apps.

Second, android makes the assumption that you want basic functionality like email, and internet use, and messaging, location info for mapping, etc, so all of that got coded directly in to the OS. yeah you can use Firefox but can you uni stall chrome? Can you unintstall gmail?

Android doesn't make these decisions, Google does. It is a common misconception that Google ships AOSP with Pixel. They do not.

Third, among those things google has an effective monopoly on is their app store. Its incredibly difficult to, as a normal person who is not especially technically inclined, to make heads or tails of fdroid, or worse to have to find your own app store.

If you don't want Google apps, either install a custom ROM or get root access (I hear KernelSU is making great progress). I don't think your point is valid, you're talking about stock ROMs. I'm not. And God help people who buy from a carrier, that's probably the worst way to get a mobile phone.

Don't want to use PlayStore? Use Accrescent + Obtanium + F-Droid + Aurora (preferably in that order). There is no longer a reason to have playstore installed on your device unless one of these FOSS projects die or you paid for apps from the playstore before. I'm perfectly comfortable with using these instead of the pre installed spyware they ship me.

There are attempts to work around this, AOSP is one of them, but the fact that its a thing in the first place illustrates what I'm trying to say.

AOSP is not a workaround, it's what Google bases their OS on (what they ship with the Pixel) along with other manufacturers. Yes, Google writes a lot of AOSP but it is FOSS and available to anyone. Otherwise Huawei wouldn't be able to make Android devices at all.

Thus, /e/os is stuck. Package microg, or dont provide access to the google app store for their consumer focused devices, or use google play services.

eOS is FOSS. Murena is the business. And no, I don't agree - they could have at least given us an option (like LineageOS does) to either have microG or not have it in the base image. This is not a hard thing to do.

I suppose I can just rip MicroG out and only install it in a "Work Profile" but not having to do that would be a great QoL upgrade.

I do know that it does not seem as though AOSP as a ROM is widely used

Giving credit where it is due: due to Google's efforts in making project Treble compatibility mandatory along with further enhancements to the Android software ecosystem, you can technically run AOSP's (or really, any ROM's) GSI on any phone you can unlock the bootloader to. That is only possible on the Pixels, older OnePluses, some Motorolas and some Nothing Phones in the US, excluding Murena's phones and some other niche manufacturers. There are caveats due to proprietary firmware but that's where we are right now.

In conclusion: I would have liked an eOS without MicroG pre-installed. I suppose I could rip it out but I'm afraid I'll miss some artifacts. But that's a minor worry. I'm sorry for the long note.

How authors of software projects behave has never been my concern when evaluating their projects technically. I'm no expert, but I'll pay tribute to Gr******OS for everything that they have done for the community; hardened Malloc by itself is a great advancement in the Linux kernel. Unfortunate that two people like them at the forefront of FOSS have disagreements, but I do not care. I hope both of them live long and healthy and bring FOSS even greater achievements.