BwMessenger was launched in 2020 and Android Playstore shows 50k downloads. That doesn't seem like mass-adoption. I don't see anything replacing WhatsApp in Germany, unfortunately.
some right wing nut job is projecting what the republicans are currently right now trying to do (and have been trying to do since Trump lost) onto the democrats
It's bizarre. The donkey's hair even resembles Trump's.
I've just never downloaded apks directly from Github and probably shouldn't recommend it for the reasons OP gave wrt keyboard apps.
I got confused by that issue about naming conflicts with the original OpenBoard. If you have installed that one, you need make your own debug build to run them in parallel.