Task Scheduler is more of an equivalent of cron. And the reason Linux systems include both cron and a package manager is because they perform entirely different, orthogonal tasks.

I don't know about Asus, but my Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH does exactly that. Buffalo makes their proprietary firmware, and also pays for having a custom DD-WRT build made. I ended up installing OpenWRT on it, though, due to some stability issues.

To me it has always gone the other way - I only bother contributing to the projects I'm already enthusiastic enough about to invest my time into.

Theoretically speaking you are right, BUT keep in mind, that it took 10 years to emulate CPS3. And for a while it seemed that DroidX would be similarly well protected.

It's still better than security by denial (usually seen in mac users)