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Comment by bsimpson | Hacker News Reader

Nobody starts a company going "and if we fail, fuck the users." The problem is that maintaining service takes resources that cease to be available when you fail. This "Promise" does very little to allay those concerns.

What's your plan to maintain those links and user data if you get acquired/shut down?

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As I mentioned elsewhere, there are certain things that can be done to keep the service running for at least your lifetime--I'm working on a trust that will be created in the event of my death (or the company's death) that can keep the servers running for a very long time to come, even with no paying customers. We will make that public when it's finished.

Great idea! Could the trust somehow have an arrangement with the Internet Archive to ensure all content is archived? It'd act almost as a last will and testament for a company.

Wow that is some incredible commitment. Mad respect.

  We will make that public when it's finished.

Well, why did you announce now, rather than when you actually had the legal agreements lined up that could lend real weight to a promise to keep the site up forever?

Because it's going to take months to work out the specifics and I wanted to make the promise now.

I feel sorry for you whenever you post. I was an asshole about your forks post, (and I'm sorry for that, (EDIT: I should have apologised before now)), and people are kind of being assholes now.

I mean, here you're saying "I'm thinking of the users in case I FREAKING DIE" and even that isn't good enough for some people.

Are you kidding us? We all need to feel a bit better by criticizing everyone as long as they're actually doing something. Next time they'll think twice before making us feel bad for not really being able to be proactive and tackle even the smaller projects.

Love this way of thinking. Why not charge something, anything, like even $1 a year to cover server costs? While it may not seem worthwhile perhaps it would protect this promise by ensuring that the service at least pays for itself.

I would have found it more meaningful if you had waited until you had those things in place to make the announcement of the promise.

Or at least mention you're working on them in the promise.

Cool idea! Looking forward to your post.

I would have to say that a lot of companies (including startups) act that way. After being up for years they give users just a couple of months or weeks or sometimes no notice at all to export the data. Many don't have export functions at all until they announce that the data is going to be deleted soon, so users can't easily make regular backups and there's a high chance they won't see the notice in time.

While true, I don't attribute any of that to malice. If the founders' backs are against the wall, there may no longer be the resources left to plan for a graceful migration.

I applaud Dustin's consideration of the "What If," but this would have been a much stronger announcement with a concrete plan, e.g.:

- what tools will be provided to backup a user's data (e.g. Google Takeout),

- how do you guarantee access in perpetuity in a scenario where you and/or the company are no longer around

I presume most people have good intentions in this area. The difference between a noteworthy step forward and the status quo is having a concrete plan in case Bad Things happen.

>Nobody starts a company going "and if we fail, fuck the users."*

with one notable exception...

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