Technology

The short answer is no, because it’s a pain in the ass and offers little tangible benefit. But I can speculate.

If I was going down this path I would look for an x86 box with a wifi card that is supported by OPNsense or PFsense(that’s usually going to be dependant on available *BSD available drivers). I don’t how well they would function but I would expect quirks. You could also check the compatibility lists of the open router distributions to find something that’s well supported. You can check the forums for posts from people with similar goals and check their mileage.

You might even be able to achieve this with an ESP32.

But what are you hoping to achieve? Do you mean open radio firmware or do you mean open drivers? Or an open OS talking to a closed radio? What’s the benefit?

Radios in any device are discrete components running their own show.

Open drivers should be possible. However I have a feeling that open firmware for wifi access points radio hardware is going to be extremely hard to find. The regulatory agencies really don’t want the larger public to have complete control because of the possibility of causing interference and breaking the rules(for good reason - imagine if your neighbour had bad signal so he ignorantly cranks up the power output, not realising that he can’t do the same with his client devices, rendering his change useless).

I seem to remember a change in FCC rules some time back that seemed to disallow manufacturers obtaining certification for devices that permitted end users to modify the firmware, much to the concern of open router users at the time. The rule was aimed at radio firmware but the concern was that the distinction would be lost and the rule applied to the entire router by overzealous manufacturers who hate third party firmware at best.

A fully open radio is basically an SDR. Can you move packets over an SDR? Hell yes, but now you’re in esoteric HAM radio territory. It’s going to be a hell of a fun project and you’re going to learn a lot, but in so far as a practical wifi ap, your results will be limited.

I use FOSS wherever it’s practical but if you want working wifi just stick to the well tested brand names. For what it’s worth you probably won’t gain any security by going open, if there’s any weakness it’ll probably be baked in at the protocol level which open devices would need to follow anyway. At least a discrete AP can be isolated and has no reason to be given internet access.