This is wild speculation, but when I read the announcement I figured that they're planning to provide the firmware and software for free, while selling fully-as

This is wild speculation, but when I read the announcement I figured that they're planning to provide the firmware and software for free, while selling fully-assembled hardware pre-loaded with the stack. Can't always rely on donations alone. I could quite easily be wrong, but without money in the equation, I feel like it would make more sense for them to work with OpenWRT rather than fork it.