Exactly. The founding story goes something like this: Dean Allen had built a CMS (TextPattern) and he, along with other TextPattern users, wanted a hosting provider that would support it in a no-hassle way. He couldn't find one that fit his needs, so decided to create his own; after discussing and rejecting formal VC methods, he turned instead to his userbase with "an opportunity to acquire a piece of TextDrive at its inception, and to benefit from its future success in perpetuity."
Jason Hoffman, Joyent's CTO, whose name appeared at the bottom of today's "sunset" emails, was there when all that happened.
So as an investor, you'd prefer that the company you invested in continued offering a loss-making service until they went into bankruptcy? Rather than allowing them to just shut it down and concentrate on more sustainable business offerings?
That strikes me as the kind of investor a company wouldn't want.
Great, you bootstrapped a company, and they used those funds to grow. And in return all you got was a shared hosting account that's lasted about 8 years. You should have gone with the options - that's where the real money for investors comes from.
And VCs know the vast majority of startups fail. Some spectacularly fail or succeed, some run out of funds, some pivot, some change direction, and some just grow into sustainable businesses. This is one of the latter.
Blame both founders for their lack of vision - in not seeing shared-hosting as a dead-end business model, which was clearly evident round abou 2006. But don't blame the business for making the right decision to close down a non-performing service.
I dispute your premise that the lifetime plans somehow threaten Joyent's existence as a going concern; if the infrastructure of the lifetime services is difficult to support within Joyent's current business, I'd prefer that they honour the spirit of their promise instead of pretending that they promised something different and hoping that lifetime customers go away.
And again, I'd suggest that you get working on that time machine, because your powers of 20/20 hindsight are truly remarkable.
Jason Hoffman, Joyent's CTO, whose name appeared at the bottom of today's "sunset" emails, was there when all that happened.