Depending on the relationship of the consumer to the provider, there may be more or less leverage that the consumer may have on the service provider and hence the contract during the development of the service.

Even in the case of big companies like eBay, I’m sure that eBay makes sure that their most important consumers agree with the next version of their contracts.

However, once the service is deployed in the real world I agree with your statement. Increasingly, service providers are treating their services as immutable. This is largely for versioning reason.

This, however, does not take away from the agreement that must be realized for the version of the contract under development.

Ali