That’s a nice sentiment from Dan, but it’s not realistic. Forever is a very long time to keep a service going with finite, non-replenishing resources.
Realistically, they set some length of time (likely 2-5 years), calculated the cost of the server time to support a machine over that time span and then added it to the cost of machine. The intent would then be to support the servers for the initial lot of ~3000 machines off the revenue generated from additional sales and whatever rake they get from the marketplace and additional feature fees.
Note: ALL OF THIS IS PLANNING. There are multiple reasons that this plan would not be executed and the servers would no longer be accessible. The simplest is that the plan changes, either because of new management, insufficient revenue, company gets bought out, someone wakes up and decides it’s annoying.
Yes, Dan has promised that the cloud software will be free for backers to use ‘forever’, and I take him at his word that it his intention to follow through. But there will come a time that Dan isn’t in a position to keep the promise anymore, and whoever is may or may not feel bound by Dan’s promise. And neither you nor I any other backer has any recourse to enforce it either.
The ONLY way to 100% guarantee that the software is available ‘forever’ (or at least until there are no computers and GFs left capable of running it) is for owners to be able to run it locally.
(If you want examples of similar cloud based services being shut-down and destroying products, see any of a number of examples from PC and Console gaming. In many cases a company (EA especially) has run dedicated servers for either multiplayer matches or DRM verification. Once the company decided that maintaining the servers was no longer profitable (In some cases only 2-3 years after launch, particularly when they wanted to push gamers to buy the newest installment of a sports game), the servers were shut down and the game was no longer usable.)