Joyent breaks abandons lifetime account holders

samnorsk writes: I've been a long time lifetime account holder of an old textdrive (now Joyent) account. I remember purchasing the account back in college for a few hundred bucks when I really didn't have the money to spend. At the time, I thought that the opportunity to have a persistent lifetime shell / web hosting account would be valuable. This would be a resource I could fall back on no matter what my current situation was. Now, I just received an email stating that Joyent intends to shut down my lifetime account.

"We appreciate and value you as one of Joyent's lifetime Shared Hosting customers. As this service is one of our earliest offerings, and has now run its course, your lifetime service will end on October 31, 2012."
They do offer a 512MB cloud machine for one year, but presumably if we don't take that, we're done. In any case, our lifetime commitment would still be dropped in one year if we take that offer.
How is it fair or legal for a "lifetime account” to end when it is no longer convenient for the company?

For reference, this was the original offer in writing:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060203030930/http://www.textdrive.com/mixedgrill

In the original offer, they state: “How long is it good for? As long as we exist.”