> ... for the manufacturer to simply publish the API ...
That is more work than not publishing the API. How much more work then? I'd pick stats from The Mythical Man Month where they claimed that doing something for external consumption is nine times the effort than internal only. Admittedly it does predate AWS, containers etc, but then again those aren't that useful for iot.
Ok makes some sense but why not just provide the API and a mechanism to change where data is sent after you have decided not to support the device anymore? Surely that is not to burdensome and will give someone out there the option to continue using the device (and probably save some goodwill over the dropping of support)?
That is more work than not publishing the API. How much more work then? I'd pick stats from The Mythical Man Month where they claimed that doing something for external consumption is nine times the effort than internal only. Admittedly it does predate AWS, containers etc, but then again those aren't that useful for iot.