When I first discovered the concept of third party firm ware I was impressed. To believe that hardware was simply being limited by the software, it is a common idea, but there is much more potential than I had originally perceived. I finally figured out how to flash my wrt54gl 1.1 on my own some time late last year and I thought it was great.
I then started trying to find out of there was more to this. What I discovered was disappointing but not surprising. Much like linux itself, dd-wrt firmware was a open source project, a lot of people contributed to this idea to make it what it is today. The problem is now a person by the screen name brainslayer is now taking full credit for these projects, including profits. DD-WRT charges a hefty fee for it's x86 version which I find to be very dissapointing. That is why I no longer use dd-wrt. I was considering buying their x86 setup but I found http://www.pfsense.com/ . Not only is pfsense free, but it is also an excellent ongoing stand alone program. It does everything and more, ideas that you'd spend 1000's of dollars to get, are free in pfsense. As far as flashing a router with firmware, it's cool and all but I know that with my gl 1.1 not even the firewall works correctly with the latest firmware flash.

I think this is a problem and I would like to put more effort into openwrt.