[memefrog]

I don't think there's any inherent reason that Mobile Debian couldn't be as popular as a proportion of phones as Debian is as a proportion of desktops. Debian itself is niche. Linux use represents what, like 1% of all desktops? Yet even with the effort spread thinly over dozens of distros it's still excellent.

And it is, remember, an absolutely tiny group of people that actually contribute to something like Debian. What percentage of users has even filed a bug report, let alone contributed a fix? It must be well under 1%. You don't actually need that many people. All it takes is a dedicated few.

The fact that even then a 'foss phone' doesn't seem to be viable speaks volumes. It would probably only take half a dozen skilled people to get pissed off and channel their pissed-off energy into it, and that doesn't seem to have happened. Either it's way harder than it has any right to be, or it actually isn't that desirable. Revealed preferences and all that...