In addition, I'm not sure what Saurik, the creator of Cydia, has to do with this discussion at all.

Finally, and most importantly, you don't seem to understand the current mobile market. Most users are the end-all-be-all of end users. Many people I know think that most of the apps on the iOS App Store are developed by Apple. People install apps without thinking. Tons of personal information is stored on your phone and in these apps, such as contacts and banking information.

Google/Android is open in the sense that Android is open source, so hypothetically anyone can hack on it.

You are the person who is half-pregnant. You want the normal end user experience, where you don't have to worry about compiling the operating system yourself, but you want it to be "hackable". That is not the definition of open. That is the definition of insecure. Because most Android users are not sophisticated computer users like yourself, a hackable operating system is just a bad idea.

If you want an OS that you can do whatever you want with, and is incredibly insecure, then fork Android and have at it. Do that, instead of complaining whenever Google makes changes that you don't understand and affect your somewhat specific and not very common use case.