I can't take this seriously when their mission statement is to "break free from Google and Apple" and their entire output is a fork of a Google repo.

If you're based on AOSP, the project is still 100% reliant on Google!

It seems extremely cynical to me to depend on the work of a thousand-man team to build your OS, then patch out a couple of lines and claim you've broken free from them. Without Google, none of this project could exist.