[OnePlus 7 Pro ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other D] HippoMan:
Yes, I donate also. I consider John Wu and others doing similar work to be heros.

And I agree that Android is more and more becoming like iOS with regard to lack of customizability.

Early versions of Android didn't need to be rooted, because the entire underlying OS was running as root. Soon, however, Google changed that, but Android rooting was still a straightforward process with most devices for quite a while.

Those days are over.

It's time for someone to come out with a completely different platform which could fill the customizability niche that Android used to occupy when it first came out. This will probably have to be some sort of billionaire who has money to blow and who wants to do a good deed for those of us who are part of the Customizability Cadre, because this will probably not be a very profitable venture initially.

Here's another idea for something that this wished-for Customizability Savior could create:

Build what I will call a "Dual Device". This would be an extension of the current A/B architecture, except the device would actually have two completely separate OS instances running simultaneously. They could have some sort of shared, overlayable memory, and both would use the same network stack.

One OS instance could be a rooted Android OS, and the other one would be stock, unrooted android OS. Apps could be assigned statically or even dynamically to one or the other of these OS instances. Banking apps, for example, could be assigned to the non-rooted OS instance, and other utilities which utilize root could be assigned to the rooted OS instance.

At any given moment, one app would be in the foreground, and this app's presence in the foreground would trigger either the rooted or non-rooted instance to become active until a different app moves into the foreground.

There probably would have to be some neutral software layer which actually deals with the hardware, and which is always running. The two OS instances would deal with hardware (including network hardware) via this neutral software layer. Also, inter-app communication would also be managed through this neutral software layer.

From the user's perspective, the device would appear to be running a single OS. It would have some inherent slowness due to the context switching and the software layers, but hardware keeps getting faster, so this lower speed might have a good chance to go mostly unnoticed. It will eat more battery, as well, but a such a dual device could also come with dual batteries ... or just a higher-capacity battery.

I think there are some over-simplifications in my description, but I do believe that this kind of device architecture is feasible. The wished for billionaire Customizability Messiah could produce the device itself and some initial versions of the software. The developer community could go from there.

This proposed Dual Device would not interfere with existing Android versions. Stock Android OS's would still be able to run in one (or even both) of the partitions. But we in the Customizability Cadre would have an easier time with rooting, because we will simply put all SafetyNet-sensitive apps into the non-rooted OS instance and not give a damn whether SafetyNet would fail within the rooted OS instance.

But these are all just dreams at the moment. In the mean time, we just have to keep relying on our current heros like John Wu and others to try to keep up with Android's customizability decline.