Edit: Apparently Motorola is doing just that.
Apple didn't "cash in", their marketing dept made sure privacy/security engineering got just enough budget to pull off miracles & then even more budget to successfully make the public forget about the very nasty Celebgate.
That was a phishing campaign, not a breach.
Xiaomi? Privacy?
Otherwise Huawei would have already jumped into that gap. They have their own Google-independent OS now so they could have marketed it to privacy enthusiasts where the lack of Google services would have been a positive not a negative.
Source you can't compile or install onto the device wouldn't be very useful.
The Linux kernel developers see what Tivo did as a "feature" rather than a "flaw" and refuse GPLv3.
Linux is no longer the community-driven choice. It's big business with billions hanging on the line. The grassroots origins are long over.
While I agree with your general sentiment, I feel necessary to acknowledge that it's just not there (yet?). GrapheneOS is a great option if you want to have a fully working and secure device.
Your provider can run arbitrary code there.
In the end I just opted out of the android ecosystem altogether and went with a flip phone that I used as a hotspot for an iPod touch (we only used over VPN with locked down DNS and nothing google related).
My privacy lasted about two weeks, because unfortunately Spotify was able to fingerprint that device to Facebook.
At the time? They still are the only devices officially supported.
Having your freedom be tied to a handful of devices from Google, is a massive supply chain risk.
Brother, you didn't take anything here, you still depend on Google good will allowing the pixel devices to be just open enough so that Graphene can be installed on them, but that can always change in the future devices on a whim or even now via e-fuses on the Tensor SoC.
Google is the one in control here giving you the temporary illusion of control. Kinda like the people plugged into the Matrix. But they can afford to play the long game over years or decades till they monopolize the market and kill any small competitors from becoming threats, and then rug-pull you.
For you to be in control you need a (almost)fully FOSS phone, from HW, to modem, to EFI-boot stack, not just the OS and the temporary permission from the manufacturer of a closed source HW stack to replace their OS.