It is based on Debian (Droidian to be specific I believe), which to me reads as a fork or maybe a distro flavor with out of the box tweaks to specifically work with the hardware they are selling.

They say they aren’t stopping you from installing anything else you want on the phone, they just aren’t going to offer help getting a different OS to work, which is reasonable to me.

https://furilabs.com/shop/flx1/

I’m already seriously considering giving this a go as my next phone soon. My current phone is desperately in need of replacement.

If it goes well I will be vocal about it.

Maybe shit like this will push them down that road faster. We need options for sure.

I could have sworn I had a bank card for a while with a 6-digit pin… Am I crazy? Is that impossible? Or is the joke worn out?

Prosecutors are not cops. The prosecutors can never win a case if the cops dont investigate first. The comment you replied to never mentioned prosecutors bringing a case, only cops investigating a case.