I am not meaning to paint those who work on AOSP or third-party ROMs in a bad light. The work they do is terrific and great for the community. I also do not mean to dismiss any of the fantastic work that Graphene brings to the Android community.
I am simply stating that the biggest difference between Librem and Android is that there are more hurdles to jump through to provide a completely usable and free AOSP phone to an end-user in 2019. Android has been made to host a Google ecosystem, where the Librem 5 is being created to host an open ecosystem.
It sounds like the Purism team identified this issue ahead of time and decided to provide that open hardeware platform for us.
Could you write more on the state of open hardware, and perhaps point me to open-hardware endeavours that have the slightest chance of success?
I understand that it is an very expensive undertaking to deliver a hardware mashine that is based on an open architecture from the CPU to the actual communication/data storage devices (logical design, actual layout, photolithography, assembly). Since patents on older circuitry must be all expired by now, it must be the lack of money that is the actual stopper for truly open systems.
The big contribution of Purism phones is that more open hardware. After that, the real question we should ask is, "What software platform can offer us the greatest values in the multi-dimensional optimization problem we face?"
It's true though that you wouldn't just flash AOSP. But it's also true that dismissing Graphene BECAUSE it is based on AOSP is unfair.