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Custom ROMs have had just about enough of being Android's second-class citizens
(www.androidauthority.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The problem of being stuck on an old kernel isn't because of Google or Android, but because of chip makers (e.g. Qualcomm) not providing drivers.
I do blame Google. It's their platform. They could mandate upstream kernels.
They could define auto discoverablity for their platform hardware. Then it would be possible for generic ROMs to boot on any Android phone.