http://photodude.com/2004/06/01/textdrive-or-how-to-raise-40...
That was followed by a number of upgrade offerings ("Mixed Grill", "3 Martini Lunch") in subsequent years, extending into the Joyent merger/acquisition, that required a larger lump-sum payment.
Their pitch on lifetime service? "How long is it good for? As long as we exist."
http://web.archive.org/web/20060202181857/http://textdrive.c...
Now, you can argue in strictly financial terms that those initial customers (of whom I'm one) have probably got their money's worth, and that the hosting landscape has changed sufficiently that the lifetime products are peripheral to Joyent's main business. The counterargument is that Joyent not only acquired TextDrive's customers, but the goodwill surrounding Dean Allen's original venture, and has traded on that goodwill ever since. Clearly, they feel that's not worth much these days.
Furthermore, giving people who've had eight years of not having to think about hosting options just 80 days to migrate, with explicit notice that their servers will be shut down and wiped on October 31, strikes me as pretty cheap.