An open source WiFi chip would be super cool. I wonder how easy it would be to take the FPGA code from openwifi[0] and combine it with a radio on the same chip?
I wonder how many "test chips" Google will let a non-expert team do to get it right? And whether they provide any "bringup" support?
An open source community would go a long way to fixing an issue like this, and these "black magic" projects are actually a fantastic place for the open source world to get started, because it's an area where there's a ton of room for improvement over the status quo.