So the story here is that Pinboard used to be a site that charged a one-time signup fee for basic accounts, and in 2015 switched to an annual fee. People who signed up before the change in business model were grandfathered and grandmothered in, since a deal was a deal.

Most companies solve the problem of lifetime accounts by going out of business or pivoting, but this isn't really the Pinboard style. At the same time, the situation in 2021 is different than in 2015, let alone in 2009. As outlined in the letter, having old-style users move to the new model would give me resources to do a lot more on the site than just keep it running.

Over the years, a number of people told me they'd be happy to pay annually to support the site. It occurred to me that I would also be happy to take their money. So I finally built a mechanism that pre-2015 users could use to voluntarily convert accounts over.

I was looking for a low-drama way to announce this, laying out my reasons while not forcing anyone who didn't want to switch to make the change. So I sent out an email. But here we are on the front page of Hacker News instead.