[colordrops]

Not great, agreed, but they did at least architect the OS so that they are decoupled and you can build without them very easily. In fact the largest custom ROM doesn't bundle with them by default (LineageOS). What do you need Google services for?

[GekkePrutser]

LineageOS doesn't bundle Google Play by default because they're not allowed to, not because they don't want to.

In fact they would like to because a majority of their users install it. But there's a lot of legal strings attached to it.