How was it again with the proprietary systems?

Osram will only be the name under which it is sold. Just like Hue from Philips. I don't think much of either system. Because the manufacturer always decides whether the system works or not. Philips, like AEG, hasn't existed as a company for a long time. Osram has also been broken up and partly sold.

Therefore, it makes sense to use a system that continues to work without the manufacturer. Whether it's Loxone, comexio, free@home,KNX all these systems do not require the Internet for functioning.

Philips hasn't existed as a company for a long time, just like AEG.

It doesn't really matter, but that's definitely not true. Only some business units were spun off – however, not the lighting division including Hue, among others. Additionally, the Philips brand is partly used under license, but Philips as a company still very much exists (and is one of my clients).

There is the lamp division and the health care division, that's still true. Senseo and Saeco were also swallowed up. However, Entertainment belongs to TPVision, which doesn't necessarily make the devices better. And Philips has nothing to do with the original company Philips anymore. Same with Osram, nothing different there.

Anything that is based on a cloud is a better retrofit solution, but not in new buildings, or when renovating. You are always dependent on their servers.

But just by the way, you can also eventually have problems with KNX. At my parents' place, we installed the predecessor of KNX, namely EIB, 21 years ago. By now, of course, some components there also break. The problem with that is, there are hardly any old components left to buy. The only solution would be switching to a current ETS version with new/current components. The problem with that is, you would have to buy a lot new, because some old components are no longer compatible with the current ETS. What I want to say is, KNX can also lead to problems over the years, but certainly not as quickly as proprietary solutions.

But these are not problems at all, but rather a normal modernization of an existing system that you are describing. After 21 years, one or the other thing can be replaced. Even just because of the functional expansion.

Normal modernization, well, if you feel like you have to replace more than half of the components because there are no more applications for the current [ETS], that's more than just normal modernization and it also costs a lot of money. But as I said, it's a special case. There are also people who don't constantly reconfigure or expand their systems; it is set up and should work. It was built back in the days with [ETS 1.x] and runs as it should and is supposed to keep running without any functional expansion. Put yourself in this situation. Your system is "finished," then runs for 20-25 years without problems, and then the first components fail, and you can no longer get replacements and would have to replace them with current components and update to [ETS 20]. The problem is that you can't parameterize many of the old components anymore because they are not supported by the current [ETS]. Then is it a normal modernization? That is also a major disaster. Old components no longer functional because there is no support in the current [ETS]. Nothing else than when the provider of a proprietary solution shuts down their service.