Those who,
- came up with the idea
- did the negotiations with the ODM
- did the hardware design
- pushed the software development
- and footed the bills
made the decision what they were going to spend their time and money on, surprising, isn't it?
Your only decision now, is if you are convinced and want to spend your money on it - or not and pass along. It's as simple as that - and no one will be mad if you do choose something else (quietly). Complaints that your ideas and the visions of those who actually did the work do not align, won't get you any further.
A few suggestions by the community were taken into account, at a point in time when the basic goal posts were already long set and a preliminary PCB design already available, changing the SOC never was on the table - and one of the stated project goals was keeping it roughly in the 100 USD bracket from the beginning (to keep it affordable <-- and we have seen previous examples(pl.), elsewhere, that did break the bank, for decent hardware, which still didn't age that well - as well as total failures that never delivered anything).
Now let's take a look at the BPi-r4[*] for a second, pricing for a kit (incl. case & PSU) including wifi7 card (BPi-r4-nic-be14, and these have only become available over the last few weeks) seems to be somewhere around 480 EUR (that is considering the ODM's own product, without the markup they'd need for a custom/ branded low volume design), that's pretty much five times as much...! Are you sure there'd be that many OpenWrt enhusiasts able and willing to afford that much? Where would you draw the line, 100 EUR, 150 EUR, 200 EUR, 300 EUR…? Beyond that, mt7995av support in mt76 is not quite where it would need to be for a successful product launch, yet - so going that route you would delay the product launch on bet on the future, on others doing the driver development for you, to make your product viable. How great that strategy tends to run out has been shown in quite a few other crowdsourced 'opensource' projects in recent years.
Let's look at the facts here, this project delivered the first batch of 150 devices (which sold out quickly, without real advertising). The next (larger) batch is in production and apparently expected to ship sometime around late October/ early November. No one was scammed out of their money with promises for castles in the air - insofar I would call this a success. If user demand allows a steady supply of further batches for the next 1-2 years (before the hardware becomes boring) remains to be seen - and the question if it might get a successor in the future is unclear as well.
Disclaimer: I am not involved in the OpenWrt One in any way, shape or form, nor do I have any information or insight into it beyond the public information gathered here and on the public mailing lists - nor do I own this device (or any filogic devices so far), nor do I expect buying it either, as it doesn't meet my personal desires either. But that's besides the point, it's not my place to complain about it either, only to decide what I do with my own money. I have no idea if the hardware works reliably, according to the stated goals and considering the capabilities of the underlying SOC, but the early feedback doesn't suggest otherwise (and even those who did brick theirs, while experimenting with flashing things incorrectly, apparently succeeded to debrick them again, so the last resort failsafe guards appear to work).
The opinions stated in this post are mine alone and not representing the project or anyone else.
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[*] and the presence of the OpenWrt One does not affect the availability of the BPi-r4, nor its support by OpenWrt in any way (surprise, the BPi-r4 already is supported by OpenWrt, mt7995av support also seems to be progressing). There's space for 500 EUR high-end devices and ~100 EUR entry level devices on the market.