Home Assistant and its developers may not be perfect, but at least the imperfections are out in the open. We can’t comment on the quality of the commercial black boxes because we can’t see it.

I think that quote is a bit harsh, JavaScript is not inherently bad, or at least no worse than the people writing it. Install script piping is not an officially recommended installation method by HA. Both are also found in projects far more critical than HA.

Giving a kneejerk rejection to Home Assistant to instead adopt another proprietary hub a bit earlier in the enshittification pipeline doesn’t seem a great plan to me.

Philips are providing another demonstration of the dangers of using proprietary smart home platforms. If you don’t control the platform, you don’t control your home. The only way to avoid this is to use an open platform such as Home Assistant, which just celebrated it’s 10th birthday and continues to go from strength to strength.