The only other options would be convincing users to pay 5 bucks a month for their software, or have some Government fork over the tens of millions required to pay open source developers. And good luck with that.
This is not happening in my lifetime, of course it isn't. But by god does it need to happen.
Every single release is a step backwards.
Android 15 cannot hold a candle to what cynogenmod did on top of android 2.3. And that's objective.
I don't think you understand what that word means.
Regardless, your opinion (and mine) is irrelevant. People want at least some of the features of modern android, and any alternative lacking those is not going to be adopted by most people. Just look at how many people try GrapheneOS and find the minor things to be dealbreakers for them.
And as long as that's the case you can't expect people to vote for a scenario where they'll end up with a, in their eyes, worse product.
For the features you can read here for example what Android 16 changed:
Parent-poster just referenced past/future legislation in general.