This might seem odd from a blog that pokes a little dark humor at service shutdowns, but it's perfectly fair that these operations halt: I was rather stunned at the vitriol aimed at Rael Dornfest, the owner of Values of N and operator of I Want Sandy and Stikkit. Dornfest wasn't charging for these services, but they were quite good at their purposes. He opted to take a job with Twitter, sell them his intellectual property, and shutter the site. (It's unclear in which order this happened, and whether Twitter required the sites being shuttered as part of the deal, nor does it particularly matter.)
This is just one example, but it's easy for folks to get proprietorial about sites they frequent. And it's a shame when that conflicts with financial realities. Rael (who I've known for several years, but not been in touch with recently) clearly didn't shut down his sites because they were popular and become an employee of an another company out of disinterest or spite. Rather, the sites clearly couldn't have been operated in a fashion that he felt would provide him a living and a return--and pay for the salaries of the necessary staff to run a commercial operation.
You can run a free site with niche functionality on a shoestring, but once you start charging, you're suddenly in a different class with different expectations, even if you outsource as much as you can and only offer business-hour email-only technical support.
Many people asked Rael in the thread I link above, why he didn't keep running the site; why Twitter didn't allow it to keep running (a supposition by posters); or why Rael didn't turn over his code to an open-source project or similar effort.
Frankly, it's Rael's bat and ball. I understand the frustration of people who invested time to use and improve his system, and who think that their testing contribution means that they have a stake in the outcome.
Maybe the scales need to fall off folks' eyes, but if you're helping a commercially oriented, closed-source project, you shouldn't ever count on your efforts being rewarded in any fashion, no matter how lovely or horrible the individuals involved.
I guess I learned this lesson about 13 years ago after contributing a huge amount of time in a beta test for a small company. When that firm was acquired, the developers got rich; I didn't even get a license for the product!
We all have to learn this lesson again. Open-source projects ensure at least some form of continuity or the ability of continuity outside the financial interests of individuals and corporations. Proprietary projects and sites with closed source or equivalent strictures won't reward you in the long run except insofar as they meet your current needs and continue to exist for their own purposes.
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