They aren’t just trying to sell a router, they are trying to make available a fully open router without blobs right from boot, that is unbrickable, and selling it essentially at cost
Where are the numbers here? How does what you are saying connect to what is being talked about in a concrete way? You are talking about software and saying it has to cost $100 or more while there are $30 routers on amazon.
This is more or less discussed in the link. They started looking at BananaPi products as a starting point, but have some requirements that existing boards don't fulfill. One in particular that probably precludes all of the $30 boards you're talking is:
"that this router isabeautiful (sic) example of excellent GPL/LGPL compliance"
These routers are crap. Anyone who cares a tiny bit about their wireless connectivity won't buy this. And I don't think OpenWRT wants to associate their name with "low-quality" routers.
What you are saying here is speculation. Most router's shortcoming is software. I've used cheap netgear routers with openwrt and they work incredibly well.
