Availability of source for custom ROMS/Firmwares

The problem with most of these custom firmwares are they aren't built from source. They usually take an existing binary distro and then tweak it by moving stuff around, adding packages and tweaking config files. Most phone mod people don't seem to have roots in the FLOSS community either so have less appreciation for the benefits of build from source.

Although I was running FroydVillain on my Hero I ended up switching to CyanongenMod because building from a known source tree (modulo propriety bits) is important to me.