IMHO Mikrotik are being sloppy by introducing breaking changes to their stable channel. Hence ISPs are reluctant to update automatically, fearing some subtle bridge/VLAN change which is sadly set to happen again (6.43 -> 6.44!). Also doesn't help that the underlying Linux stable kernel updates more than once a week.

Every Internet connected device needs some automatic update functionality by default. It's tricky for routers since you typically do not want any downtime and it's really difficult/expensive (well at least 2x the cost for hardware alone) to do a blue/green (or is it red/black?) deployment. Not to mention since Mikrotik is low end, there is no state replication functionality between routers.

Here is a config for Mikrotik that updates my non-ISP hardware once a week at 3AM: https://gist.github.com/kaihendry/59a656c3883450d2df2fd52574...

And when the ISP opts out of the suggested automatic update default, they need to make the commitment to test and roll up updates in a timely fashion. As we all know this is hugely expensive, and I strongly believe a vendor/"computer program" should be able to provide this service. Customers with these ISPs who didn't update are probably seeing some crazy packetloss.

So the future I'd like to see is Mikrotik updates being automatic, staged to some degree & ultimately non-breaking. Cons are downtime for some & I guess allowing your device to be remotely controlled by Latvians. ;)