@marcellinusme
There can be plenty of reasons: There's the hacker mindset of "Why not?"; Building off of a mainline distribution gives one access to everything in that distribution; Likewise, contributing to making a phone possible does the *opposite* (e.g. I can make my laptop a "phone"!); It is impossible to have a fully functional FOSS userspace phone with AOSP; Google is working towards making Android less open.; Don't build your business off of someone else's product.
@kop316 @marcellinusme Also an important point to some of us: AOSP is open-source, but its development is quite locked down, and only serves Google's interests... Working on a Linux-based distro gives developers more leverage to contribute and shape the ecosystem in a way that benefits the community, rather than one single company
@awai @kop316 @marcellinusme Add to that the fact that many Android apps don't even bother to start when they hit a non-vendor Android claiming it has been "rooted". Same story when you want to run without google play services.
