Do you use a device with open source Android firmware? What device, which distro and what do you do with it? I have a Samsung tablet with LineageOS and apps from F-Droid. Other than displaying dire warnings about the unlocked bootloader every time it cold boots, It’s great for a “recliner system”: email, Web browsing, E-book reader and MP3 player. What do you have, what do you use it for, and how well does it work for you?
Therea no way around the play store verification subscription when an app implements it. Not like the old days when you could crack apps, which is stupid from a security standpoint anyways, but either way that’s gone, and many apps are moving to that.
That said, yes, people should try different things, but should know all the up/downsides of the decisions so they don’t waste their time as well. microG giving people push ability doesn’t really do the job anymore for many peoples use cases.
A couple months ago when Google out a beating on Aurora and everything was near useless because of rate limited accts and people either had to log into Google accts or not get anything done, a shitload just went with Graphene and the sandboxed play services that they didn’t have to worry about. The Matrix room full of new installs showed that on a daily basis for weeks.