What you say about the code they have taken is a big true, several "boxes" indeed runs linux, minix or bsd in a way, and the code is closed.

Apache http server may had it's better days a long time ago, but that foundation develop and support lots of high level projects besides their http server.

I think the limit is still in the hardware, but i can't see in the near future a way out to proprietary hardware. Peak oil will smash our way of life soon, we have no time to develop free and open hardware, we (the people) don't have the skills to make a simple usable transistor.