From the blog post:
TL;DR: We have joined the Z-Wave Alliance, thanks to revenue from Home Assistant Cloud subscribers, and will start the certification process for Z-Wave JS.
As a z-wave user myself, I am pleased by this. I was apprehensive about Z-Wave JS at first, but its been super reliable and stable for me.
Yep, it’s because of that proprietary and “every device must be licensed” nature of Z-wave that I use Zigbee devices - I’ll pick an open platform everyday over a closed one, even if it has limitations.