I really want not to be snarky and downplay anyone efforts, but I just wanted to point out that such an operative system already exists and is open source. You may have heard about it, it's called android... I can't even think of a valid reason to "reproduce" (aka making something that kind of looks like it but in the end is annoyingly different). For fun, maybe is the only valid one...
Seriously though if you pulled a nice installer for really up to date android on my desktop the thousands of apps in the play store and I would be really grateful...
Can someone think of any solid reason for why I should be interested?
I love Android but I'm also a developer. It's not productive to try and write code on Android. I have in the past skinned my Gnome Shell to look like Android Holo (I just applied styles someone else created).
Much like bumper stickers or giving your hatchback racing stripes, it's a way that people can personalize their experience.
Also for the people who are designing the skin, it gives them practice interpreting/adapting the spec and some of that knowledge may trickle back to the source.
People like to skin OSs in general because they want to change the appearance to something they like, while preserving the other familiar parts of the OS; I've seen Windows made to look like Mac OS, for example. Linux systems can be made to look (and behave) like any other OS, with enough customisation. It's understandable that people like the look of Android, but they don't want to deal with the rest of the Android ecosystem.
Seriously though if you pulled a nice installer for really up to date android on my desktop the thousands of apps in the play store and I would be really grateful...
Can someone think of any solid reason for why I should be interested?