There are many other ways for a free service to make changes like this. Grandfathering existing users, to name one example which probably would have made jacques a lot happier.

True, but I think the bigger point is: why do you believe you have any right to demand anything? The service is free, you should be expected that the service you are not paying a dime for may do things you don't quite like once in a while.

I think the bigger issue here is the entitlement that seems to come with every service online now days. People seem to think they are entitled to demand whatever they like and how they like it for things they aren't even paying someone for. I think the best example of this was all of the whining about Craigslist suing Padmapper because it was ripping off Craigslist content and trying to piggyback off of the work CL has put into building their brand and infrastructure.

I demand nothing. I just exercise my right to terminate this relationship from my end and I exercise my right to write on my own blog whatever I want.

My point is that there seems to be an entitlement to be outraged over free services you don't pay for now days, and that people seem to think they need to write blog posts to publicly shame companies when they alter services they are offering to the public for exactly zero dollars.

You seem to be suggesting that free services are free from criticism, which is just silly.

He is entitled to be outraged, stop it.

Right. To take it to a somewhat ridiculous extreme, what about something like this?

"I just found out that this company was infecting all their users with bubonic plague."

"Stop complaining. It was free!"

This is what Turing_Machine is doing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

Offering something free doesn't make one immune to criticism and criticizing isn't entitled whining. This is fair criticism.

jaquesm's opinion was given to you for free, what are you complaining about? If you don't like it, don't read it...

You stop complaining. You didn't pay for the comparison or the "entitled whining".

>True, but I think the bigger point is: why do you believe you have any right to demand anything? The service is free, you should be expected that the service you are not paying a dime for may do things you don't quite like once in a while.

I think it is more of a feeling of breaking a "gentlemen's agreement". When a free service provides a service for X amount of time (expectation building), and you provide them with lots of data and additional users (network effect), and then suddenly they change the rules, it is upsetting. Being a victim of bait-and-switch is not a pleasant feeling.

If the CEO of a free service I was using came onto my property and started smashing my windows, I'd certainly feel I have the right to demand he stop (even if his actions were endorsed by the service).

By all means, they have the right to shut down their service, or change their policies, etc. But I think their underhanded way of implying the service-user endorses something which they don't is ethically wrong whether there is an existing business relationship or not.

In summary, I feel there is a set of things I absolutely have the right to demand of free services. There is a different set of things which I would prefer they not do, but are completely within their rights (shutting down the service, charging for it, changing the way their comment model works, anything like that).

For the record, I think the CL haters are a bunch of whiners, too. I draw a line between users demanding a site change to accommodate their whims and users expecting a site to not change.

Stasis is good. Let some other site be the one to "innovate".