Another thing, do you have a team behind you (does project go on if something bad happens to yourself)? It sounds like you are solely doing everything on your own. Reason I'm asking is because as you mentioned, the initial investment is huge. Worst case scenario, lets say something happened to you and you are no longer able to continue, does the project stop? People would be stuck with very expensive hardware...
Many people can do such firmware, including me. It's not a problem. This product has amazing characteristics, and it needs to be realized. Also if you have such boards, you can try to run Equihash or Monero in parallel with SHA3 algorithms.
I know that there are a lot of people that know stuff that others don't, and can do stuff that others can't. But @whitefire990 is opening the door, while others are secretly personally hiding behind the door for personal gains, or else, there wouldn't be this topic. The main point was that, will the door still be open to the public if anything happens to @whitefire990... or would future advancements only be done behind the door for their personal gains.
The more this adapt to the public and the door remaining open to the public, the better. ASIC companies like Bitmain have monopolize this industry far too long.
If @whitefire990 successfully bring back FPGA mining to the public with his own software, then he can be like the next Claymore (bet he/she has their own island somewhere from all the residuals from GPU mining software).
I do not understand the phenomenon of Claymore. How is he better than the rest? In addition to his product, there are many programs.
I think there are situations when the only solution's provider can stop supporting it or increase the price. But competition will fix this situation.