One thing F-Droid folks could do would be to help OWS provide a build that can work without proprietary google stuff. That could be in the form of comments on that Microg issue I already mentioned, or other suggestions. I don’t know how gradle works and I barely know the Android ecosystem. I’m just a user here. You guys have a ton of experience, being the free software clearinghouse of Android, and that knowledge is valuable, especially if you share it with upstreams. 
I understand it can be frustrating working with OWS, but my experience shows that they actually listen. It just takes time, and patches are worth more than any complaining, which is why I’m hesitant in reopening the discussion there.