Very fair points and it is worth reminding people that most startups fail (usually with a whimper that no-one hears). I wish the team well and thank them. I might never have started a blog if not for Posterous.
However, teams and products that do manage to make a name for themselves potentially end up leaving more unhappy people in their wake when they're 'acquihired'. It's not quite 'fail fast' from the point of view of the users who've been around for a while. (NB I'm not suggesting that the Posterous team could/should have done anything differently.)
Edit: FWIW each acquihire-type story nudges me slightly more to consider open-source alternatives, even if they involve some pain to set up/manage. Purely to feel a little more insulated from scenarios like this.
"nudges me slightly more to consider open-source alternatives"
Right. While it was certainly unfortunate that Posterous was acquihired the impact from a saas/paas closing would be magnitudes more disruptive.
Everyone comes across as a winner and doing well with no chance of going under until it happens. Imagine building something using mailgun,appfog, engine yard or (pick whatever you want) and then having to scramble (even over the course of several months) to try and replace the functionality.
If these events drive people towards open source, Godspeed! <3 opensource. One other really nice benefit is a lot of these companies themselves further the open source community (see twitter bootstrap, patches to rails by various startups, etc)
However, teams and products that do manage to make a name for themselves potentially end up leaving more unhappy people in their wake when they're 'acquihired'. It's not quite 'fail fast' from the point of view of the users who've been around for a while. (NB I'm not suggesting that the Posterous team could/should have done anything differently.)
Edit: FWIW each acquihire-type story nudges me slightly more to consider open-source alternatives, even if they involve some pain to set up/manage. Purely to feel a little more insulated from scenarios like this.