I don't think this was ever about Joyent wanting to escape their lifetime hosting obligation. It was more about them not wanting to be in the shared hosting business - they don't want to do that work. They still don't want to be in that business, but they old founder has offered to come back and do it. All it will cost them is a little money, which is not so much when they think of all the damage this publicity could cause their business in years to come.
Sure, but all it was really costing them in the first place was infrastructure and support costs.
Is the new Textdrive supposed to be financially self-sufficient? That doesn't seem possibly. Even if Joyent gives them all the hardware and bandwidth for free, who is going to pay for the support and maintenance? The handful of paying shared hosting customers?
This is one of my main concerns too. What's the business plan here? How can I trust "lifetime" will mean something more than a year or two? As much as I appreciate Dean stepping in, it may be too late.
Fair enough, but it seems like it would be hard to build a shared hosting business even without having to support a bunch of non-paying customers from day 1.
