I don't think you're part of the solution

I only entered the market by accident. There is not much of a barrier to entry. I bought 50 machines from a recycling company in Maryland for another project. My friend suggested putting pfsense on them and selling them on ebay to help get rid of them. Your lowest cost product is $299. I am sure you know this industry better than I do. Ping me offline if needed.

Have you made a significant amount of money from this? What is your profit margin? This sounds like a good business.

No, we only sell ~4 machines per week. Profit margin at this price is thin. Maybe we need a better marketing campaign :) The machines without hard drives cost me $20 each. I got a bulk deal on hard drives and network cards. Once we sell all 50 machines, we don't plan on selling any more.

So, why isn't selling cheap pfsense devices on eBay part of the solution to avoiding vendor spying? Because you also sell pfSense hardware and it's more expensive?

because that's the revenue we use to pay the developers.

I'm not sure what you mean by "vendor spying". Perhaps this is a reference to the FCC-required controls for 802.11 devices.