I'm writing open source networking software that has potential to become an operating system like Cisco IOS. I see a niche opening up here because networking firmwares running on hardware have been doing a great job for years but are now being squeezed out by virtualization. There's room to replace them with new software (but we have to act fast before everything but the kitchen sink is shoehorned into the Linux kernel).

This is open source so if you want to do some relevant OS-style hacking then you're welcome to get involved. It's called Snabb Switch and it's at https://github.com/SnabbCo/snabbswitch/wiki