Asuswrt-Merlin is published under the GPLv2 license. The source code is published on Github where it can be browsed from the web, or checked out using a git client.

Development is done in a Ubuntu 16.04 LTS virtual machine. Linux Mint 13, Ubuntu 10.04, 12.04 and 14.04 are other development environments known to work for compiling the firmware. See the Wiki for guides on how to set up a build environment.

Note that some components are proprietary to various entities (Asus, Broadcom, Quantenna, Paragon Software, Tuxera, etc...). For these, the precompiled binary blobs are included in the repo, and the build system is able to make use of them to generate a fully working firmware.

Copyrights belong to their respective owners.