There are clones and clones and some other Chinese-designed boards like Wemos that work just fine. Maybe they're not $2 but you can get them for $5 a piece. I h

There are clones and clones and some other Chinese-designed boards like Wemos that work just fine. Maybe they're not $2 but you can get them for $5 a piece. I have an D1 mini board with ESP8266 that has been running for at least 2 years with Tasmota and a bunch of sensors, sending samples over MQTT. If the Western companies stop doing open source hardware, some other companies in China will go on with their own designs. Some have already copied your designs and some others will also make their own and some will copy those as well and also conterfeit other succesful Chinese products. That how it works in China. The problem with most of these Chinese products is no documentation or useless documentation.