Sometimes government contracts with software suppliers have source code held in escrow so that the government can obtain it, use it, and support it if the supplier for any reason is not able to service it any more.
This is a similar kind of thing except it is a general licensing arrangement with many customers. So, Rachio could consider the customers as a group and on its own initiative establish a legal framework that provides some assurances of continued use. The benefit or entitlement might be limited to each person holding a serial number of a Rachio controller.
It would take a very progressive company to take these kinds of steps to protect customers. A buy out of Rachio by a larger firm may be in the future – it is hard to know shareholder interests – and this may create a problem if the buy out was not to continue the product but with an objective to eliminate competition and obtain the customer base.
This happens sometimes in the IT sector where a bigger firm has competing technology and does not want a smaller player in the way.
