No, you haven't understood. It will be cloud-capable. They're asking that it's not cloud-only.
And there is no they, the commenter is a single individual.
"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
They.
For a system that absolutely doesn’t need a “cloud” to operate?
But this is my second concern.
First is availability of replacement parts after the get bought out and they shut off the servers.
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%.