If you sell a service, but decide not to provide it you should refund the money. Judging from the comments most of HN assumes if you "attempt" to provide the service you can keep the money.
Yes, I get it's a losing proposition for Joyent to live up to their obligations. So what? You either live up to them, or refund the money, it's really that simple.
Yeah, the comments seem to be filled with people saying that it's not practical to provide "lifetime", and people buying it should have known they didn't mean it anyway.
I look at this the same way I look at "unlimited" internet service. Unlike a lot of the tech crowd, I have no problem whatsoever with metered bandwidth. My only quibble is that if you advertise "unlimited" you had better actually provide unlimited. If you want to charge for overages or enact caps, you don't get to call it "unlimited".
Yeah, the comments seem to be filled with people saying that it's not practical to provide "lifetime", and people buying it should have known they didn't mean it anyway.
And that fascinates me. There's a clear information asymmetry here, and therefore a clear power differential. But so many people are instantly willing to blame the weaker party for being trusting, rather than blaming the stronger party for abusing their customers.
Of course, they're only doing that after it blows up. None of them are saying, "Stop using Hacker News! There's no revenue model, so it will all end in tears! Quit now!"
It's an interesting question. If I make a promise I know I can't fulfill, and you know I can't fulfill, is it still a promise? Is there a breach of trust when I end up not being able to fulfill it?
I'd say that yes, it's still a promise and a breach of trust even if everybody knows I don't really mean it. But I don't think there's a single obvious answer.
If you know you can't fulfill it then I believe it's all on you, in that you're lying.
Some fraction of people will believe you, and even those that don't can't know you can't fulfill it. There are plenty of legitimate life-of-the-company deals. One of them is buying stock. And there are plenty of companies that offer lifetime warranties. Only the person offering the deal has the information to know that they can't honor it.
And in this case, Joyent can honor it; it's not like keeping these servers running would put them out of business. They just don't want to honor it, so anybody who took this deal is so far correct in thinking that Joyent made a promise that they could fulfill.
Asking them to do it is fine, but you can't obligate them to do it. A contract can never force you to perform work, because that is slavery. It can force you to perform work or suffer some kind of penalty. In this case, I think the appropriate penalty is a full refund for all of the affected customers.
Are you a lawyer? I'm not, though I studied law for a while.
What you say may be true of common law. But I suspect the doctrines of equity may have other ideas. The return of funds is not the same as lifetime hosting. Those clients want specific performance and equity may yet grant it to them.
No, I'm not. And yes, the clients want specific performance, but do they have the right to get it? Seems like at most, the clients would be entitled to a refund plus whatever damages they could show (e.g. the cost of switching to a different service, plus any losses they take from other arrangements they made based on the promise of lifetime service). Could a court really order Joyent to keep providing this service against their will? Seems like restitution would be it.
Some people don't want damages or restitution. They want specific performance of the contract. In this case they may be in a position to get it.
We're not discussing labour laws here, the slavery argument doesn't apply. This looks to me like straight up contract + equity.
> Could a court really order Joyent to keep providing this service against their will?
That's what an order for specific performance is for.
I've emailed a self-described law nerd of my acquaintance. She geeks out on equity law, so this sort of case is right up her alley. I'll be interested to see what she thinks.
