My biggest problem with meshcore is definitely the mix between fully open source software and the proprietary freemium software model.

The actual core of the system is open source. The app they promote as the official app is proprietary and premium and not open source.

The default map on the meshcore website appears to only accept uploads from their premium proprietary non-open source application, which makes it kind of quite frankly useless.

Open-source apps like meshcore-open and meshngr exist now, but for almost a year, the only app you could get was proprietary shitware.

Also, some of the firmware for some devices is not open source either. The community firmware from my understanding is open source, but firmware for like the T-Deck is proprietary.

With all that said, I have actually tried meshcore with meshcore-open and I really like it. The app is much simpler and easier to get your head around because you only get presented with the settings that need to be changed.

I do not know why, but for whatever reason, after about a day or two of being connected to my node and just living my life walking in range and out of range, etc., the app will no longer find my device anymore, and I have to factory reset the device in order to get it to come back. So I’m not certain what’s going on with that.

The more time moves forward, the more militant about open source I am becoming. And so I will not touch the freemium proprietary shitware app for anything. At all. It’s not going to fucking happen.

Edit: A link to my bug report. https://github.com/zjs81/meshcore-open/issues/331