Are you sure? While its open source, your phone won't be (since the OS is MIT licensed, your OEM won't have to give you anything). Can you build a custom ROM without kernel sources?

This doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the software, though. You can easily lock down linux for a given phone if that’s your goal (at face value anyway).

Well, this is the reason the gpl v3 came about - to ensure the four freedoms even when faced with "trusted computing".

Unfortunately Torvalds rejected migrating to it, and seems to be quite an outspoken critic against the GPLv3

I appreciate what you are saying. So many people assume that open source gives them the keys of the castle, while later they realize that a simple broadcom closed source driver puts the whole openess in the trash.

I've been happily buying Nexus and Pixel phones for as long as they've existed, on which you can easily unlock the bootloader and build your own ROM if you want. I don't see why Google would stop doing that just because they've released a new OS.

If you're concerned about installing your own software on your own hardware, why not buy it from a manufacturer that protects your freedom to be able to do so?

Well for starters they have been cleaning up Android from GPL related licenses.

Android now compiles with clang, including their own modified Linux kernel, and gcc is no longer supported on the NDK.

Yes, but they are still shipping AOSP and still selling Pixel phones with unlockable bootloaders.

Clearly, Google wants to be able to support companies which want to sell locked-down phones.

But as long as they sell their own phones with unlockable bootloaders, you can vote with your wallet and buy those phones.

I am concerned about the reduction in use of the GPL, but what I care about is being able to run and modify the software on my phone, and as long as Google is still releasing AOSP (and the Fuchsia open source project), and selling phones that are unlocked, I'm happy enough with that.

Yes, they might change their policy in the future. But for now there's no indication that they intend to do that; they've always been good at selling their own phones and Pixelbooks with unlockable bootloaders that does allow you to replace the ROM if you want.

I (not having looked at the architecture yet) have a suspicion that Fuchsia will run on a hardware-independent layer, like Treble which they're pushing right now.