Security wise Fairphone isn't up to GOS standards, so a collaboration wasn't on the table either way.

I don't know the situation, but if it's as this part of your comment implies, then that's clear bridge-burning on Graphene's part.

If the current phones don't have a chip or whatever, that doesn't mean they can't reach out to Fairphone and say "Hey, we'd like to promote our OS and join up! However, we requure such-and-such hardware. Are you interested?"

Saying "It doesn't have the chip, a deal with them will never work" without reaching out isn't productive.

I assume that Fairphone has quite the problems competing with more established markets and the OS is an afterthought, so they went with /e/. But hey, I might be wrong, and it's all a conspiracy to maie an illusion of choice with Fairphone+/e/.

But if the mission of Fairphone is fair production and repairability, the fact that security and privacy are afterthoughts seems like a reasonable (but foolish) standpoint. They should care.

However, since the mission of Graphene is security and privacy, that seems like they should be the ones to reach out and try to provide their world-class software to as many people as possible. This probably includes supporting more than one make of phone.