You can put a different appstore, right, but you still have to rely on some external push notification service, because the OS became crippled and less capable than it was.
I repeat, you could easily run background tasks in Android 1.5, no problems, and you can't now. Only with persistent icons, and even that looks likely to change. So AOSP doesn't really help here because the OS itself becomes more restricted.
Also, 'most users' argument is not valid. It's like suggesting, "people can cut themselves with knives, so let's ban knives and everything with a blade. If some people NEED to cut other people, like surgeons, well, whatever, they shouldn't, because most users don't do that"
Well, that phone from a different company will have to run another OS, because no Android vendor will help with the kind of problems I'm describing.
Also, do you _really_ suggest that running a persistent ssh session in a terminal or a VPN connection is a 'hacker' activity that should require flashing a phone with a custom build of an OS? Uh-oh.
I repeat, you could easily run background tasks in Android 1.5, no problems, and you can't now. Only with persistent icons, and even that looks likely to change. So AOSP doesn't really help here because the OS itself becomes more restricted.
Also, 'most users' argument is not valid. It's like suggesting, "people can cut themselves with knives, so let's ban knives and everything with a blade. If some people NEED to cut other people, like surgeons, well, whatever, they shouldn't, because most users don't do that"