It works so well I wouldn't mind paying some fee, but it'll depend on how much.
My earlier comment was based on a change of policy which happened around 1st March, and any Unleashed quotes as of 1st March (and the two-weeks prior) need to be re-quoted for the new "license per AP" Unleashed model.
I've been a bit busy with other work since that bombshell dropped, but if I get a moment I'll try to dig up some pricing.
The other thing to note is feature discrepancy between Unleashed and standard. Perhaps of most interest to your average HN contributor was (the last time I checked) IPv6 was not supported on Unleashed firmware, and not much sense of urgency (if any !) to rectify that.
For me I bought my AP on eBay and just plopped the standalone Unleashed firmware on it and that's all seemed fine. In what I see there's nothing changing? But it sounds like you're running a /much/ larger install.
As you may or may not be aware, Ruckus have an "all quoted" policy, there is no price list per-se.
At the time I was working on the project (late 2020) Ruckus did have a promotional activity going on where you could buy Unleashed kits at fixed prices without quoting.
However due to various technical questions that were coming up (e.g. IPv6 support) we missed the window and it was uncertain if Ruckus were going to extend the promotion.
Ruckus did extend the promotion, at least initially (Jan-Feb 21') but then they switched to the "license per AP for Unleashed" and the promotion was killed off.
It was at at that point that my friend took the hint and dumped the idea of Ruckus and I went back to my normal work.
If I get a chance I'll try to find out what happens about second-hand kit. My guess would be that if you stay on old firmware there's not much they can do about it. Although whether its desirable or advisable to stay on old firmware is another question, obviously.
Without going into detail because, well, you never know who's reading ....
TL;DR "WatchDog End User Support" is now mandatory for Unleashed and is sold and priced on a per AP per year basis.
The pricing is not too scary (two digit figure per AP per year). But I'm told the requirement is (will be ?) enforced so its unlikely to be a case of being sneaky and paying the first year and "forgetting" to pay the renewal.
I've clearly only just scratched the surface of Ruckus stuff.
I have it on very good authority that Ruckus have started rolling out a change in their pricing model to require a Unleashed license per AP to operate, a move which obviously increases costs to the end-user.
Some people might say its a deliberate move prevent cannibalisation of their main business model by nudging people away from Unleashed. I couldn't possibly comment.