Could that happen? No. A massive amount of android development comes from employees paid by google to do it. What amount of resources should be siphoned away from linux/gnu stuff to support android developers? None.

Is it possible though? No. Android is a proprietary binary blob core (idr if kernel is the right term) with a bunch of open source stuff wrapped around it. For gnu, that part would have to be rewritten and that’s too big a job to take on.

Should it happen? Again, no. There are already plenty of alternatives to google branded android. Just use those.

Even if you were to wave a wand and make the android custodians according to your will, play services, the thing google is restricting, is still googles thing.

Lets ignore the "is it possible" and imagine what would happen if it was. Whatever entity forks AOSP would start off with (next to) no userbase. The platform "Android" will remain Google's AOSP, including some proprietary components. Whenever Google decides, they can enforce apps on the Google Play Store to use a new version of the Android system API. This is often a breaking change; apps that update won't work on older Android. There is nothing stopping Google from creating complex breaking changes that tie into their proprietary components, killing off any attempt at running Google Play Store apps on older or "fully FOSS" Android. Even if a hard fork of AOSP existed, it would not remain compatible with the vast majority of applications.

So even if this could happen, it won't. Nobody is going to invest in hard forking a project that is going to be killed off by Google's monopoly.

The much better (long term) option is to stay completely outside AOSP, like with mobile Linux distros such as postmarketOS. Right now, it is underdeveloped and not an option as a daily driver for most. But over time, this is the only feasible option that can give control back to the user.

I'd rather they supported a full linux phone instead of investing in something Goofle owns.

Sorry to pop your bubble but Google is Platinum tier member of Linux Foundation.

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members

As long as Google is doing a better job maintaining AOSP than a nonprofit would, what's the point?

If they ever stop doing so, then this might be an option.

Whose paying for it? Most Foss devs are paid now by companies.

Their are already Linux phone options. I'm talking about full-fat installations and even distro-hopping.

Even assuming that happens (very unlikely), the real issue is convincing OEMs to ship this new version instead of Google's

That inefficient dumbster fire? What for?

It would be nice if they did that, or something similar involving Linux on phones.

I don't think they have anywhere near the resources, unfortunately.

I'm not sure what GNU is going to do. A while back they announced that they wanted to make sure free software phones were going to be a thing, but i don't think they're forking android to do it.

The Linux foundation is not for the people either... They serve their corporate sponsors.

Iirc, there was talk of getting the android core to sync back to Linux and send plenty of code upstream. The project was supposed to take plenty of time as android had strayed very far away from its Linux origin. I have no idea what happened and when the project stopped.

I thought AOSP and GrapheneOS were not going to be limited by thee changes?

No, and for that matter Linux can't survive without for profit corporation labor either.

there is postmarketOS, lineage OS, and graphene that creates a privacy layer of it. Lineage OS has a bunch of phones it works on, while graphene is exclusive to pixels, sideload lineage OS onto your phone system (DON'T FORGET TO BACKUP!) and install it. It's as good as it gets.

Postmarketos works in a similar fashion you sideload the bootloader but you can install Linux distros exclusively for phones.