Whether or not the US has that backdoor, we really need open source software for networking equipment. Yes, there are open source firewalls, like OPNSense, but so far we are lacking good and generally available open source software for network switches. And at least from what I have heard OPNSense is more a firewall than a router. Not sure how well it is handling BGP and other stuff ISP need.

Since Mikrotik has been mentioned, I really wonder why they do not open source their SwitchOS. They are essentially giving it away "for free" with each of their switches anyway.

I am aware that network equipment, especially with hardware offloading (fast pass) is a little bit more complicated than just putting a linux kernel onto it, but I really wish for some development into that direction.