Working with upstream is most convenient for their users, for them, and for the ecosystem as a whole.
> On March 27, 2026, Start9 CEO Matt Hill hosted a private unveiling of StartOS 0.4.0, the next major version of the operating system that powers the Start9 Server One. During that same session, Hill also gave viewers a first look at StartWrt, the router’s dedicated operating system. StartWrt is Start9’s fork of OpenWrt with a modern GUI that reimagines the router experience from first principles. The interface is sleek, modern, and a clear departure from the technical admin panels that define most open source router software today.
> Where OpenWrt’s default LuCI interface is functional but technical, StartWrt presented a clean, modern interface designed for users who have never configured a VLAN or written a firewall rule.
When you consider the circumstances a fork is the only thing here that makes sense. You can't just open a pull request to OpenWRT where you are like "Here is our purpose built simplified GUI we designed for our router, please merge."
[0] https://www.solosatoshi.com/start9-announces-fully-open-sour...
No, because a fork and an overlay are not the same thing. Getting your custom frontend has nothing to do with sharing the maintenance burden on all the grit behind it.
All I'm saying is that a full-on fork is not the right thing to do when all you're trying to do is have your own frontend, or modify a small number of packages.
It's not really a binary concept either. It's a scale from "immediate & transparent overlay" (not keeping anything from OpenWrt vendored and just piling on top) all the way to "hard fork" (one-time hard break from source) with lots of steps inbetween.
Also, wtf is "pull request begging"? If you can't get pull requests merged, that normally means the target project doesn't have enough maintainers. In turn, that means you should be going around reviewing pull requests on your own initiative. You don't need anyone's permission to make comments on other people's pull requests (at least not in general.) Just do it. I mean, yeah, some projects have very high or maybe even obnoxious requirements, but in my experience that's very rare and happens primarily with "enterprise" / "corporate" things. Unless proven otherwise, I'll assume most FOSS projects are at least trying to make things work collectively. OpenWrt certainly does.
I always get the impression that when things are designed this way, you can't configure a VLAN or write a firewall rule, and so far I've never been proven wrong. :/
If I'm looking for a consumer friendly router, I'll go with an option that is cheap and capable, I don't care about the OS being open source and if I cared about it being open source, I'd prefer it if they don't fork the software in a way that splits the community and where the fork is dependent on their commercial success to the point where I might be stuck with the hardware and no upstream support.
Honestly, we don't. We know it won't be competitive with the plethora of high performance ARM network SOCs found in commercial routers. If you use this with advanced features enabled (traffic shaping, packet inspection, etc.) on a fast uplink you will be CPU bound, and the CPU isn't fast. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that knows why this platform has any appeal.
You don't buy this expecting to max out your 10 Gbps fiber. There are other, valid reasons, but not that, and I'm glad it exists: one day, there will be RISC-V network SOCs that dominate benchmarks.
So why isn't there this kind of stuff in routers?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor
The StartWrt port supposely adds some nice features, of which VPN chaining looks especially useful. And a better UI will make it more accessible. There are plenty of people out there who are willing to switch out their routers and chain VPNs to escape gov/ISP/big tech surveillance but don't have the technical means to do so. These are welcome improvements to reduce friction if they manage to pull it off.
The specs are not too bad for the price considering this is a startup project. It has 8 cores with per-core performance similar to Cortex-A55 + 4GB LPDDR4 + 16GB eMMC, which is better than most off-the-shelf routers. I wish they released the WIP schematics and code though, because there seems to be nothing at the moment.
I had to make a couple of tweaks for the fan controls (experimenting, i don't even remember if i wrote everything) and now i have a beast of a router with 8 cores, a 1TB NVME, 8GB RAM, and besides routing it hosts a media server and a bunch of containers. (gitea, home assistant, immick, ...)
If only it had a couple more USB-A ports..