@smallcircles@social.coop well, free software doesn't necessarily prevent corporations to thrive.

It is also more of a public good, or charity, that enriches technological potential of society, and gives user freedoms.

People, for which free software cares about and tries to protect, just don't care about it.

Consumers just want to the "cheapest" price for the "largest" value. And, Corporations can deliver this (thanks to profit oriented practices). Long term, not so good,... but, rarely someone cares.

I am running Aotect Zi-Stick (ZGA008), but I would probably go with Sonoff ZBDongle-E, which is based the same EFR32MG21 chip, but has external antenna.

I recommend to use #Zigbee2MQTT because it's decoupled from home automation software:

- ability to switch software in future without repairing all devices in different software,
- no duplication of efforts to add device support in multiple softwares,
- ability to run (or evaluate) different software in parallel against the same Zigbee network.

It is decoupled from home automation system.

It does just one thing, and it should do it well. No duplication of efforts by writting support for same devices in multiple softwares.

In future if I wanted to redo HA from scratch or swap it with some else software, I can continue using Zigbee2MQTT without repairing all devices.

Even, I can test different software in parallel, by connecting it to already running MQTT, to access sensor readings of my existing running Zigbee network.