I think the only option that has an even remote chance of success right now is to fork Android and do your own thing while maintaining compatibility with as man

I think the only option that has an even remote chance of success right now is to fork Android and do your own thing while maintaining compatibility with as many existing Android apps as possible. So, something like Cyanogenmod but with more drastic changes. It's Linux under the hood after all. It's already compatible with GNU coreutils and a whole bunch of other free software. No need to start again from zero.