Why is it so hard to support alternative (FLOSS) OSes?

[ben]

@Douwe

There are many ideas that make ideologically sense, but that run against the hard brick wall of economics. There will have to change a lot before we can run an economical healthy phone company based on another OS then Android GMS.

I drafted a reply and deleted it, because douwe made a much better summary above. I really think all of the effort mentioned above would able to kill the company. No one succeeded in establishing a economically working third OS, even Samsung, Microsoft, Palm/HP and Cyanogen failed. Only Sailfish OS survived, although it might be quite a niche OS, it’s amazing how they do that.