I'll talk to LightningASIC about getting a sample unit to one of you two. I had assumed there would be no interest since the Gridseed chips have a Scrypt component.
I think there's a lot of assumptions or miscommunication on that part (not by you - just in general).
I've asked pretty much all of the Scrypt ASIC manufs and had no luck so far. Right now I think bfgminer is the obvious choice for them. The only other two miners either a) don't support Scrypt or b) don't support ASICs. bfgminer supports both and more.
bfgminer has not and is not dropping Scrypt support, not dropping GPU support, and is always looking to support new and interesting hardware and algorithms.
Do not mistake any single bfgminer
author's opinion on alt-coins as a statement of what the bfgminer
software will support for technologies. They are unrelated.
Edit: We're always looking for contributors too. We just had a new fellow in IRC yesterday who is getting a dev environment setup and will also be helping with the Scrypt support in bfgminer.