Those firmwares function but really don't have elegant and easy to use user interfaces. If you read the link, EFF wants to create some easy to use router firmware for ie. small businesses to run a open network from with QoS, all from a "minimalist secure interface" that selfupdates. No firmware today has got those last two parts down, and it's really hard to set this stuff up when you aren't doing network operations as your day job.
How is luci not easy to use, or inelegant? (particularly say, with luci-theme-bootstrap). I strongly doubt EFF have some magical idea to create a simpler interface. It's trivial to install luci-app-qos, luci-app-samba and other basic software that a small business would need. It sounds like they just want a different default config for OpenWRT/CeroWrt, where multiple zones are enabled by default, and one is opened up.
The idea of does everything for me, including updates and minimally secure are disjoint ideas - you can't have security unless you have complete control over your own device - and OpenWRT with luci already provides that. Relying on a third-party to do your updates, even if it's a trusted body like the EFF is always open to attack.
OpenWrt doesn't provide the self-update by default, and I hope it never decides to add such thing, unless we get reproducible builds, and build some kind of network consensus to verify the integrity of packages, and that they were derived from specific source code (as Nix/Guix and Debian's ReproducibleBuilds are attempting). In other words, we need to remove the centralization of updating, because it's such an easy target for the likes of you know who.
Bootstrap make LuCI look better, but it's still complex and full of non-human-readable stuff. For example, the interfaces on my router are called ge00, gretap0, ip6tnl0, pimreg, se00, sw00, sw10, teql0, tunl0. I work on networking for a living and I have only a vague idea what those are.
Also, you know what else is such an easy target for the likes of you know who? Unpatched systems.
FYI: CeroWRT is a fork based around David Taht's work combating bufferbloat. It describes itself as a project built on top of OpenWRT, which sounds slightly less scary IMO than fork.
