Sooo I've been a user for a long time, but not really much on the dev or image building side. I bought an Orange Pi 5 Max, and they have their own packaged OpenWRT image. It's not listed anywhere here. Their images are downloaded via Google Drive, and their update repos are based in the Huawei Cloud in China. Is there a way to validate the legitimacy of the image and get it listed from normal OpenWRT sources?
Stated more specifically, the Orange Pi 5 Max is not supported by the official OpenWrt project. Therefore, any firmware available for the device is based on a fork from Orange Pi and/or other developers. Therefore, the "legitimacy" of the firmware images can only be validated by Orange Pi (and is, of course, contingent on the trustworthiness of that organization). If the images come from Orange Pi directly, I'd consider them 'legit' based on their own development, but the OpenWrt project cannot vouch for the security posture of that fork, nor the stability or functional behaviors... simply that it is a fork created by the vendor for that specific device. Of course, if the image comes from any other source, you'd have to get the source code and audit it yourself.
Thanks! I might just return it. I got enticed by the chipset for media related stuff... but their current level of support is pretty lacking. OpenWRT was my fallback project. Overall there are a lot better platforms for me to put OpenWRT on.