Is Cisco Meraki a monopoly in your opinion? Because they will absolutely not pass traffic in their devices without a subscription.
They are not. The fact that Cisco isn’t a monopoly on networking equipment is the only reason Meraki isn’t 100% of their offering. They push whoever is willing towards Meraki, while still offering other stuff so they don’t lose the market share that isn’t willing to go for it.
I have no doubt that if Cisco owned 802.3 Ethernet and 802.11 Wireless and IPv4 and IPv6 as proprietary protocols (the way Microsoft owns AD), Meraki would be all they offer, or at least the only place they put new development into. And it’d also cost at least five times what it does. Not being a monopoly is the only reason they have to compete and offer what the rest of the market wants.
In fact, they actively try to create lock-in but people are mostly too smart to go for it. Last I heard, despite OSPF existing, they still try to encourage people to create EIGRP environments that will be a pain to turn multi-vendor with later if needed. Fortunately, few are that gullible (and those who are, are probably drinking the Meraki kool-aid already anyway)