Why the hate, Velv?
As you state yourself, hardware obsolescence is bad. Nobody is asking the FCC to fix it all, just not to close the door to one of the few options we (the community) still have left. Any effort improve security, reduce landfill and extend the useful life of embedded hardware can only be a good thing. Sure it's a small share of the market but it all helps.
Not to mention that many SOHO routers I've worked with don't even work properly as shipped. OpenWRT provides no end of improvement to such devices. I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to keep that avenue open for as long as possible