Changes at Meraki and Open Source Alternatives
Here is an interesting rundown on the history of Meraki and perceived negative changes that have been made to the original offering. Changes like forced advertising on the original price point while tripling the price to use the ‘Pro’ service allowing you to charge for access, most recently the right to flash other firmware onto Meraki hardware has been removed.
These changes have lead to splinter groups that are working hard (and successfully) to duplicate Meraki’s offering in an entirely open source solution. See http://www.open-mesh.com/ for one such group.
Meraki makes another business blunder
After just a few months, Meraki responded by updating their End User License Agreement [...] (which) allows the Meraki to
prevent any changes to the Meraki hardware or firmware (software) on
any new hardware purchases.[...] My ultimate goal is a completely open source solution for creating a Wireless Open Mesh Network by April 1st. Let’s work together to make that goal achievable everywhere!
Hmmm, yeah, we will be moving away from Meraki, I guess, but I don’t see that happening right away. Meraki has some maturity and stability in comparison to the alternatives. They are a business though, they need to make money, but they might as well be shooting themselves in the foot with all these changes in their terms and conditions. Or it might be driven by other business partners or upcoming partnerships.
They do underestimate the power of the community though…