I'd be careful catering to everyone asking for everything but the kitchen sink. Creating a non-cloud capable system is dumb.
If you have customers like commenter above maybe put in a clause in the contract that says they will receive a partial refund if/when there is an acquisition event during the warranty period and bump up their price by 20%.
"As someone about to be in the market for something like this, propriety lockout is a complete deal breaker for me." - StrangeATractor
"Would your company be willing to provide an open-source local-first websocket-based integration with https://www.home-assistant.io/ or use the new Matter + Thread standard to provide it for everyone?" - daredoes
"Most of your competition has no sensitivity, and almost no openness, about these aspects. I think this could become a really important part of your go-to market, but also a differentiator vs other products." - simonebrunozzi
"I would like to be able to add it to HomeKit without it ever phoning home once. Matter + Thread help make that a possibility." - X-Istence
Yes this is HN what do you expect, of course everyone and their grandma here is gonna want a fully unlocked, open source and free as in freedom fries product.
I mean, aside from the fact that you misunderstood the whole point, nobody ever paid 20% extra for a heating system which didn't have cloud connectivity. In fact, the whole idea that there's something wrong with a heating system which doesn't require an internet connection is so incredibly bizarre that I can only wonder if you're someone who came out of a time machine.
Lastly, a partial refund does fuck all to compensate for the fact that you have a multi-tonne brick in your house that has perfectly functioning hardware but broken software (because the server it used to talk to is gone). It also doesn't compensate for the wasted resources.
If you have customers like commenter above maybe put in a clause in the contract that says they will receive a partial refund if/when there is an acquisition event during the warranty period and bump up their price by 20%.