[janpieterz]

I'm not sure eecks is really being entitled, I read it more as (s)he's referring to the often heard remark (here) about any kind of thing that shuts down that is free: "You should have paid for it, use service xyz that is paid and they won't shut down". It is more prevalent in the online business of course, but happens in offline as well.

[jacquesm]

Whether you pay for something or not does not guarantee that it will not shut down, it will simply change the odds that it will. Imagine if LCS would have made hacker news monthly a free publication, he'd have had to shut it down long ago. So in that sense paying for the service made it possible to last this long in the first place but that does not entitle you to expect the service to last for ever.