I’m not trying to put Google on a pedestal here (they are just as if not more unscrupulous as Apple in terms of business practices), but the ability for Android to be forked at all is what sets it apart from iOS. GrapheneOS is probably the best example of a forking project done right, and something Apple will never allow as an option for the user to install (or at the very least, will never provide the core resources needed to make a project like GrapheneOS work on iPhones).
As for the proprietary blobs, that’s incumbent upon all hardware manufacturers. We have to be a bit pragmatic to say that a completely libre phone is still largely a pipedream for the majority of the userbase (similar to how linux is often installed on proprietary hardware without libreboot), but there is a difference between providing proprietary blobs to be used for development, and holding them under lock and key forever.
I’m not trying to put Google on a pedestal here (they are just as if not more unscrupulous as Apple in terms of business practices), but the ability for Android to be forked at all is what sets it apart from iOS. GrapheneOS is probably the best example of a forking project done right, and something Apple will never allow as an option for the user to install (or at the very least, will never provide the core resources needed to make a project like GrapheneOS work on iPhones).
As for the proprietary blobs, that’s incumbent upon all hardware manufacturers. We have to be a bit pragmatic to say that a completely libre phone is still largely a pipedream for the majority of the userbase (similar to how linux is often installed on proprietary hardware without libreboot), but there is a difference between providing proprietary blobs to be used for development, and holding them under lock and key forever.