"Neither does charging." As we saw almost happened with Sortfolio. "little chance that we're about to disappear (or get acquired)" Have you seen The Godfathe

"Neither does charging." As we saw almost happened with Sortfolio. "little chance that we're about to disappear (or get acquired)" Have you seen The Godfather? "Not to toot our own horn, but Fog Creek has been around for 12 years" I do get your point and I know of the reputation of Fog Creek obviously. I'm not comparing you to Apple cancelling Newton, rack servers, or clones (to name only a few examples at that company). And while you are correct about saas companies each situation is different and from experience I am weary of profitability of a product or a company. Fogcreeks financial circumstances can change (as can googles or any companies obviously) and in that case the best intentions go out the window. It's every man for ... I remember a time when it was close to unthinkable for someone to walk away from their mortgage for all but in the most extreme cases. Obviously the mentality with that has changed (as well as with bankruptcy) and jobs for life. In the end companies and people do what they need to do to survive and make hard choices. To me the fact that a service is paid makes it more likely to survive (once again the outlier being the Sortfolio threat to close if no buyer found at 480k.) than one that is free and generates no revenue but has operating costs. As a general rule. Each situation is different. Otoh, I do believe that a paid product from certain companies (Apple just shut down Mobile Me) is not always better than a free product from another company (Fog Creek) as one example.