I choose my routers based on if they are supported or not by OpenWrt. And for everybody that asks my opinion, too. Because they might not need/want/know/have a desire to install OpenWrt now, but it's good to have the door open for the future.
So yes, definitely worth having the option of alternative firmware.
I've fairly recently gotten some PC hardware to let me build a much more powerful router, perhaps atop Debian or Alpine. But that's gotten pushed down on the priorities stack, when having cheap little plastic OpenWrt routers and spares works for now.