> Somebody has to pay for the support. There is no free meal.

The problem is not that people need a free meal. The problem is that people need the ability to eat some other food when the OEM's restaurant is closed or unsatisfactory.

Who creates and regularly keeps the firmware for the dozens and dozens of router models secure and up-to-date?

Who ensures the maintainers for these routers are incentivized to do this competently and in a timely fashion?

You haven’t answered these key questions, which are equally or more important than whether a community firmware can be applied.

I mean, OEM would make the device upgradeable, government will pay independent bounty hunters and patchers and will push the updates. Then consumers pay for all that.