Once again, I have no actual idea on developing firmwares for routers other than that most routers have the same hardware and that is how you are able to develop custom firmwares for many different routers.
Having a community lead development of hardware would be a first and definitely would valuable to many people that use openwrt/lede.
The popularity behind OpenWrt is been able to use it on any hardware you wish from various manufactures for either extending functionality or extending the life of a product once the OEM stop releasing firmware updates.
I wouldn't purchase an OpenWrt branded/designed/built/endorsed router because I find that there is plenty of choice of quality compatible hardware on the market.
OpenWrt is already successful and the best way to support it, is to make donations to the project.
I still think a so called "endorsed" router even if you don't manufacture it would be great for the project as it allows people that aren't savy to pick hardware that will work without frustration. For example I picked up the NETGEAR R6700 from best buy the other day to find that I am unable to flash with openwrt/lede. Apparently it wasn't supported even though its bigger brother(nighthawk r7800) was. It's a bit of stupidity on my part but many wouldn't have this problem you came out and officially endorsed certain hardware. People want the security of an open source project while non of the tech headaches that come along with it.
I know it's a open source project and people develop it with their free time so I shouldn't be asking for anything...
What router do you test openwrt/lede on?
I assume you ask this because you want to figure out of a consumer router running standard firmware is better or openWRT can guarantee you safety.
I think the future will proof the safety is 0% in reality.
There is no safety at all. History has proven us, that backdoors, mistakes in programming, etc. were always discovered after the product was released.
Be that the KRACK hack, or intel chips with Meltdown, or whatever. History has proven us nothing is 100%. There will always be ways where your safety CAN be compromised and thus 0% safety.
The real question is IF and WHEN an open door is found and thus can be misused, how fast can you close the gap?
Most hacks and open doors when they are discovered find their way among those that are specialized in this field very fast. But how fast companies are in implementing fixes, either temporarily of permanent fixes, is usually something you can ignore and many companies on older hardware don't even publish firmware updates.
Golem.de had a nice article about this a few weeks ago that most hardware manufacturers actually are extremely slow in closing gaps, if at all!
I found in the time I'm using LEDE-openWRT that once errors have been found, they fix them within hours! You just recompile your own firmware with latest submissions and case closed.
Thus using openWRT and keep your firmware up to date when news hits the public about backdoors, etc there is a very small time-frame where hackers actually can abuse the available info to hack your router.
The experience I made with openWRT how they close gaps in the security within hours while I'm waiting on hardware manufacturers for months or even indefinitely before they bring out firmware with fixes made me to believe I only buy routers which support openWRT and first thing I do on every router is install latest firmware from openWRT.
I think if you keep your openWRT up-to-date that's the best course of action, but again, if you wanna know what to do to get 100% safety, I advise to forget about it as I personally think that will never happen.
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