Banana Pi BPI-W2 (RTD1296) new image : Openwrt Lede with Kernel 4.9

Please add me to the openwrt repo for W2, thanks willpoloni

Why not just make the repo public?

Has there been any effort to push changes up to mainline for better future support?

Unfortunately, this is always true. Excellent hardware without good software quickly becomes useless, where crappy hardware with excellent software are still usable way beyond their expected lifetime.