Thanks for this effort. But please make it more clear, that we are not talking about anything 100% open source or FLOSS here since all the firmware blobs are part of the release as well. It is just “more” open source, in the same sense like Fairphone is more fair but does not meet important criteria of the FSF or other organizations striving for things which are really open. Users do NOT gain full ownership of the device, they just gain more ownership - so please don’t use the term “full” here as it’s really misleading (what can also be seen from some posts in this thread btw).
I doubt it’s legally okay to include opengapps, and I don’t see much sense in preinstalling it - people who want the google apps can stick with the regular FairphoneOS. Or what’s the point in using FP-OSOS apart from getting root? Same for “microG” - I assume that using it violates some Google terms of service.
Talking about features, one thing I would like to have changed by default is the DNS, so all requests sent from the FP2 would not go through Google’s DNS servers. Another feature I would like (also for the regular release) is a prompt for split passphrases for protecting the encryption key and the lockscreen without the need for additional apps here.
We should keep in mind though that the more FP-OSOS diverts from stock Android, the more difficult it will be come to upgrade to future Android versions later as all these customizings will need to be ported as well. Therefore, I opt for keeping the system as close to AOSP as possible, with only the bare minimum of really important changes being made. This would greatly enhance the ability to provide security updates in a timely manner.
And talking about being open - this has been discussed in other places on the forum already - some people of the community would love the software development processes to be more open with things like easily accessible commit log (like cmxlog for OmniROM / Cyanogenmod) or an open issue tracker (even just with read acceess would be a huge benefit, as the community could see what issues are currently being worked on).
Thanks!