[sspiff]

I agree. I worked for a company that was building their own TV platform on top of Android. From their (and my) point of view, Android was meaningfully open.

You don't need Google's closed services to have a working and meaningful platform. You also still benefit from the large developer mindshare and identical APIs compared to Google's Android.

You don't have the added benefit of the content discovery & delivery platform Google provides, nor of any of the closed Google API's. Depending on your use case, that may make it "meaninglessly open", but I would definitely argue that this isn't a universal statement.

I also have multiple Android devices that don't have access to Google Play (a set-top box and a system-on-a-stick) and I really don't mind that they don't have access to Play.