Routers are the most overlooked surveillance device in most homes. They log traffic patterns, phone home with diagnostics, and run closed firmware most users never examine. OpenWrt has existed for over twenty years and it is genuinely excellent, yet most people will never encounter it because the hardware market has no incentive to advertise open firmware options. This is not a knowledge problem. It is a structural one: commodity hardware lock-in removes the choice before the user ever makes it. Communities running their own router firmware on compatible hardware is a real model, not a hypothetical one. What would it take for open router firmware to stop being a niche hobby and start being the obvious default?
Some companies already ship their products with openwrt as standard. But like most FOSS products, it needs more advocacy and advertising from tech influencers if you really want to hit critical mainstream mass.
I prefer using something like OPNSense at my network edge, but OpenWRT belongs on every internal AP and router-being-repurposed-as-a-switch
