[UVB-76]

A couple of months at least.

It could take more than a couple of weeks for many users to realize the service is shutting down (skip past the email in their inbox, etc.)

Even if a user receives notification with the full two weeks notice, they could be on vacation and unable to download the files.

They could figure "Oh, I'll make a note to download my stuff when I get home from work" then forget all about it.

[MichaelApproved]

What if their development team found other jobs, giving the standard 2 weeks notice. Who will maintain the servers and code for those few months?

Sure, the code allowing for the export of data might seem trivial but you still need someone to maintain the system. It's almost guaranteed to need some kind of attention over a couple of months in use. Especially if the export feature was written quickly after the announcement was made.

Now, we've decided to maintain a couple of employees for 2 months to support user exports, where will those 2 people work? Will they work from home? Do you have infrastructure in place to allow them full access from home? No? That means they'll need to come into the office. Will it just be the two of them in the office all day on their own? Do they need some kind of HR? What if they find other jobs during this 2 month export process?

What about customer service? People will have questions about how to export the data or what to do with it. Does anyone answer those questions over the next few months? What if those people found other jobs. Do you hire and train someone new just for those 2 months?

[hnha]

It's not your/my/our job to wonder what resources might be needed to keep it running. If you build a service like this, you should have a user-friendly exit plan.

At the very least they could be open and honest about what is going on instead of pulling a "thanks for being part of this incredible journey, we've had our fun so now we will let you stand in the rain".

[MichaelApproved]

"thanks for being part of this incredible journey, we've had our fun so now we will let you stand in the rain"

There's nothing fun about shutting down a company and putting people out of work. Also, standing in the rain is being dramatic.

Yes, it's expected that a service provide you wait an export feature when they shut down but you also need to consider the ramifications of a company shutting down: people jump ship. And rightfully so. They have families that they need to take care of and looking for another job is #1.

If you're this concerned about being able to export your data, don't start using a company unless they already have data export feature available and publish a detailed user-friendly exit plan in advance.

Presumably, this company sent out emails to everyone notifying them of the closure and export feature. Yes, 2 weeks is a little short but I understand the complicated logistics of extending the export timeline.

[kalleboo]

Dump each user's data into a ZIP file with HTML content+all the images. Now you've reduced a "keep creaky web app running" problem to "host some static files with authentication" problem. Might even be able to stick it onto S3 or something and have next-to-no maintenance. Nobody needs to be fulltime to support that, just have an hourly sysadmin on retainer to fix issues that come up and keep on top of security patches, shouldn't be more than a couple hours a month tops.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

[kevinchen]

Since most users only have a few KB of text in OhLife, they could just run the exporter for everyone and then email them the results.

[acgourley]

Exactly this!!

[balladeer]

All they would need is few KBs for every user. They can as well just email the exports to people in case they didn't turn up to collect the export themselves (maybe missed the email or are in the woods trekking or whatever). Either as attachments or hosted somewhere they won't delete in 2 weeks.

(Though it shouldn't be a problem for those who have it in their sent boxes, but some even wrote on the website sometimes like I did).

[eps]

A couple of months at least notice before a service that was meant to help "privately remember your memorable days" deleted all of those memories? Time to find out who runs this and never trust them with anything again.