I have been hacking around with the WGR614L for a while now, and it is a nice bit of kit; however, as always, there are things you notice along the way that could be improved upon.  What follows is my take on what would be execlent to see in the next product/itteration.  I have to commend Netgear for stepping into the Open Soruce market; I hope my comments will enable them to make the most of this market.

Hardware 

A pin header for the serial port.  Just about any hacking requires the use of a serial port.  It would be great if the "soldering" hurdle could be avoided (it fine if like me your ok with a soldering iorn), that would really open up the device to a greater number of people.  Just look at the number of "do you have a serial port" comments on this site.

Use standard screws to access to case; I had to purchace a T-8 screwdriver just to get the case off.  If you want people to hack it, let them get to it.

The chipset has two serial ports, and a USB host port.  It would be great if the additional serial port and the USB host port were exposed, at least internally.  This would allow a whole world of extentions to the device; print server, dial-up backup, NAS server, and even more hdd for the OS.

Bootloader

It would be greate if the bootloader used the CRC checksum in the TRX header, and not a sepearate checksum (ala CHK image).  Not only would this make life easier, it would also free up a block of flash (0x3a0000-0x3b0000) or other uses.  I understand the motivation for using the CHK header, but it would be nice if this was only used to check the image for validiaty when flashed and not when booted.

The entry point should be changed to be 0x80001000 (not 0x80001400).  This just makes things more standard, which is a great help when porting software to the device.

Store the board_id in nvram not in a structure in flash (0x3e0000-0x3f0000).  Even better use a small region of flash to store some enviormental variables for the bootloader.  This would leave more flash for other things!

Don't strip the help information from the bootloader.  If the intention is to let people develop software for the device it would be much easier if the interface provided was helpful.

Holding down the reset button (when powered on) should put the device into "tftpd" mode.  This provides a great way to fix broken firmware, without having to use a serial console to force the device into this mode.

Above all I would love to see the definitive source code to the bootloader.  Much of the information I have found has been done so by pieceing things together.

Documentation

A little documentation would go a long way.  There is a bit of a vacume in this area; although I am sure this will be filled by the community.   Here are some simple things that would have made my life far simpler:

Documenation of the boot process and boot loader.  It would have been great to know exactly what the bootloader was doing, without looking at the source code; documentation of the commands, documentation of the boot process and documentation of the various data structures used (ie checksuming).

An understanding of the CHK format is required.  Although not complicated, in generaly, there are some gray areas, such as the "reserved" fields.  A definitive document would be great!