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Comment by raverbashing | Hacker News Reader

This serves as a lesson to startups as well

Never offer something for a lifetime

Even if the cost of supporting it "forever" is minimal (that is, the complete opposite of what AA has done)

Things like GMail, for example. You may be tempted to do it. Don't

Always put in your terms of use a provision of termination. Of course, be reasonable, for example, allow the user to backup the data given a reasonable timeframe (e.g. Google Health)

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Heh, perhaps some Joyent staff may have something to contribute to this conversation. They offered a "lifetime" hosting deal with shell access a while ago for a one-off fee, and I have heard that this is becoming a bit of a millstone for them. Certainly my brothers 'lifetime' account with them is not getting a lot of love and feels a bit like it's being left to rot on decrepit hardware.

I wonder would they do it again with the benefit of hindsight, or did it serve their purpose?

Upgrading users is one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios. If you do: some users are unhappy about old hardware. If you don't: some users are unhappy about uptime and changing software.

Joyent's CEO was on HN a while back and mentioned that if users on the old FreeBSD boxes want to run on the new illumos boxes, they should send an email to support.

I don't think GMail offers anything contractually "forever". The service is always offered "as-is", and you have the option of either continuing to use it or taking your data elsewhere. (Hence the furor over the new UI.)

If you'd said "Never offer something for free", which seems to be what people are responding to, I'd have a whole other set of arguments...

GMail generates revenue, so it doesn't work in your example as a "free" service. You pay for it by agreeing to have your email trawled to pull relevant ads.

Makes me a bit worried for pinboard.io. It's not free, which puts it in a better position than its competition, IMO, but it's a 1 time only payment. I hear they're profitable now, though, and have vowed to not go away like delicious did.

Pinboard(.in) has a $25/yr "pro" level; believe he's said the pro service is enough to keep it running for everyone.

I just bookmarked this very article in delicious.

"Never offer something for a lifetime"

Unless cost decrease exponentially over time, like with gmail, in witch storage cost falls down like a stone.

Stone falls with no faster than quadratic speed and has a maximum limit if not in the vacuum.

Until there is a major flooding event.

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