Nice discussion going on here! 
In general, I think it’s a good idea to suggest apps for different standard needs to the users and give some advice to them. Otherwise, they had to e.g. read to a lot of topics in the forum here, which is very time-consuming and obviously not the way to go for everyone. However, I see multiple possibilities to implement this (and there may be even more):
- Community based tutorials, though we’d be in desperate need of better wiki “software” in this case, IMHO.
- Tutorials by Fairphone on the download site of FPOSOS (or linked from there).
- A software implementation integrated in the OS itself.
From my point of view, 3. might be a bit unnecessary overkill binding resources that could be better used for more important work. In particular, I’d agree with @kuleszdl and @lklaus here:
However, if FP wants to have an own solution to this and serve their customers directly by own software or tutorials rather than community based tutorials, I could in fact understand such an argument and would find it reasonable, as well, also from a customer’s perspective. (Also see the quote of @keesj a few lines downwards).
One way or the other, I’d agree with @TobiasF that it’d be nice to suggest several apps, explain basically their features and differences etc.:
In any of these cases, you’d still have to decide which and how many apps to preinstall. Of course, one could preinstall one app for every “standard need” (whatever these are) and provide alternatives for those who need them as suggested earlier:
And I agree to @keesj and @kuleszdl that this might be needed for quite an amount of users interested in FPOSOS:
However, if the tutorial or software implementation is clear and all info is accessible in one place in a user-friendly way (hence avoiding working through the forum), that could also serve the not-so-tech-savvy people. Though there will still be users (no idea how many) who may just want default preinstalled apps instead of working through a tutorial (even a user-friendly one) and who would be “lost” if provided with nearly no preinstalled apps (as e.g. in AOSP). Regarding this, I could understand a decision to include preinstalled apps for standard needs, although it’s definitely not my personal preference and I see a good point in:
And, as @keesj himself already pointed out, It’s a tough decision anyway:
I highly appreciate these thoughts. Some people (again, don’t know how many) may feel like pushed to use a particular app or classify the preinstalled apps as bloatware.
The bottom line is, I guess, that it’s just not possible to serve the needs of the wide spectrum of users (well, not a new insight 
).This being said, I like the idea of providing different “versions”:
Though this may produce to much work and one really needs to make sure that this splitting doesn’t screw up maintainability. Hence, I fear that this is not really an option.