Because everyone who trots out the "you're the product" cliché wants to be the customer, and this is what that looks like.

Development work and qa isn’t free. They are probably selling that one at a profit to help raise funding to get this off the ground.

It sounds like it will be open source for all though.

I'd think most tech-able people would be able to; I've had Cyanogenmod on most of my Android phones, and it's been fairly straightforward to install. It's not too difficult to install LineageOS (on which this is based, the successor to CyanogenMod) on most phones - indeed there are step-by-step guides to do it which don't require too much skill to complete - and it's possible to run it without any of the Google Apps.

Not sure what this project is going to provide that isn't already available after an evening's search, but they seem to be charging a fortune for it.

i’m probably able to, but that doesn’t mean i want to... or that i want to spend the time to potentially brick my shiny new i/nexus/pixel

My shiny new Nougatized phone doesn't have the LineageOS privacy guard or file manager and I'm thinking of switching just for that.

I support privacy focused upgrades!

If a device can be bricked just by a simple reflash of the OS partition, then it's a very good reason for me not to buy it at all.

But they're asking about £800 for doing it? Seems steep.

I didn't even look at the pricing. That's quite a bit.