No one gives a single shit what language the thing is written in. What users care about is how monstrously complex and difficult it is to use OpenWRT.
Anything more complex than changing SSID and password requires trawling through two different outdated wikis and years-old forum posts. That's if your search engine can even find something other than thousands of people asking the same question over the years.
OpenWRT needs to be usable and approachable. Any random person off the street should be able to walk up and configure their network. Even for highly technical users it's a struggle to do anything.
It does not matter one single bit whether there's rust in the codebase if it's never run because no one can figure out how to use it.
Rust is not a feature. It's an implementation detail that absolutely no one cares about and does not affect the user in any way. I'm really sick of this shit.