Can someone summarize the apparent PR problem Logitech is trying to solve? I'm not familiar with the situation.
tinfoilhat: Anyway, I for one deeply regret this - not least because I have some great Logitech devices that I depend on, and now I'm worried someone might decide to accidentaly brick them in a firmware upgrade, as they're no longer generating profit for Logitech. /tinfoilhat
That said, they badly mishandled this situation, and the fact that there was so much product confusion (people thought they had just bought a link, when they had bought a hub, and people who bought a link even when it was released 6 years ago have a reasonable expectation for it to keep working) and I am glad they have shifted their position.
For home automation, I would expect the appliance's lifecycle to be closer to the refrigerator and oven (20 years and still going; EDIT: this applies to audio as well, my previous A/V setup was mostly older than me while it worked, and I'm no audiophile), not to "get your ass on the HW upgrade treadmill and replace again with iWhatever2017 or suffer the consequences." There's the point, as you note: the expectation to keep working, as opposed to an endless pile of discarded gadgets.
People got mad, media found out about it. Now they suddenly can replace everyone's no problem.