[LineageOS Questions & Answers] Andy3153:
This might be quite ranty, but I just want to talk about a problem with the service LineageOS offers in order to actually contribute to the project.

Why am I doing it on XDA? Honestly I looked for a long time on the official website for a forum, and I couldn't find anything, so, here I am.

I wanted to fix a small inaccuracy I've seen in the wiki page of a device I just installed LineageOS to, so I read their wiki page on how to do exactly that. I made my change, and when I wanted to actually commit my changes, I saw the instructions said to create a Gerrit account.

'Sure thing', I thought as I happily went to the site, and I clicked on the 'Sign in' button. To my surprise, I reached a Google login page. I thought I pressed something wrong, so I went back, wanting to just create an account using an ordinary e-mail address, for multiple reasons, privacy and staying away from Google as much as possible being the largest one.

When I realised that this was the only option, I eventually caved in since I already took the time to make my change, and I figured I might as well just upload it. I logged in and, to my surprise, I saw I had a profile picture I set when I was around 13. Weirded out, I clicked on 'Change Picture', only to see I was getting redirected to none other than Gravatar. Ugh.

I went through the trouble of getting my Gravatar account back since I used an old e-mail address (actually just hijacking my old account to delete it and then creating a new one). Needless to say, it didn't work at all, and I still had my Minecraft profile picture from fifth grade on Gerrit.

Giving up temporarily, I scrolled more through the Gerrit account details, and I reached a section about e-mail addresses linked to the account. I added the e-mail address I actually wanted to use to the account, and, surprisingly, it allowed me to set that one as the main address, but even more surprisingly, it allowed me to remove the GMail address from the account. So, without thinking twice, I did that. Everything seemed well, even my profile picture updated to the normal one. I then continued to add more details to the account, like my username, and just as I was about to generate myself a new SSH keypair to get started and finally end this, for some reason, the page refreshed and it kicked me out of the account. Then, I tried logging in, shortly after realising my edits were on an inaccessible account due to the need to log in only through Google and the fact that I removed the GMail address. So, now, I technically have two broken accounts: one that can't update its profile picture and with a bad username (the one on the Google account), and one inaccessible one due to how signing in is handled that's hogging onto the username I want to use (the one with the e-mail I wanted to use).

So, in conclusion, LineageOS Gerrit, for some reason, forces Google account log in and also forces the use of Gravatar. Really now? I understand offering Google account log in as an option, but not as the sole way of creating an account. I couldn't care less about the profile pic if I didn't have an old one I couldn't replace.

Why don't you make it easy for people to contribute and just offer classic, normal, e-mail sign in, like any other service?