I have two Yale Zwave locks that are at least 11 years old and still kicking. The key factor to this is the non reliance on the cloud.

Zigbee, Zwave, Esphome and other non-cloud will always work longer than any cloud based solution that is at risk of being shutdown, use a outdated or no longer available app, become a subscription, etc.

I agree with you that they should be required by law to open their code and unlock the devices but I doubt this will happen any time soon.

This works very well for tech enthusiasts and people who self-host nextcloud at home.

The issue is when you are a government or university, it becomes harder to get all your users (which are probably not all tech savvy) to install a third party app store deal with the Android warnings about installing from third-parties, etc etc.

And this is probably the user base Google are targeting with this move (assuming it’s malicious) . When the higher ups complain that their files are not syncing and need to install things with a special procedure they sometimes wonder why they are not using M365 or Google which seems hassle free.