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Two years ago the GitHub Student Developer Pack gave me $100, which I have been using to maintain a tiny droplet (literally changed my life, thank you). Last mo

by BoppreH 11y ago

Two years ago the GitHub Student Developer Pack gave me $100, which I have been using to maintain a tiny droplet (literally changed my life, thank you). Last month Digital Ocean sent me this message: We’re truly sorry if this came as a surprise. As of March 2015, we revised our Terms of Service announcing that we’re no longer able to offer credits that do not expire, and any unused credit added to your account more than 12 months ago will expire. I still have over $80 of credit left, expiring this month. I understand why they are doing this, but it left a bad taste because of the small values involved, retroactive action and lack of communication (I didn't get this March 2015 email or any reminders since). This also creates a perverse incentive to burn the credits in a blaze of glory. I'm restraining myself, but I can only image the headache this will create across all users.

joeyrobert 11y ago
Do it, they're incentivizing you to bring up 8 VMs or 1 really big VM.
- kevincox 11y ago
  Yeah, but I don't have the use for 8VMs. Give me notice and I will try to use it up. But don't give me a month, I can't effectively use that in time. I can waste it, sure. But that's not the point of the credit in the first place.
onli 11y ago
> I didn't get this March 2015 email or any reminders since I checked my emails as well when I got that. There was no notification in March or since of that change.
detaro 11y ago
If people are looking for a way to use up credit and want to support something useful, run an Archiveteam Warrior. Helps to archive (soon-to-be) dead websites and and isn't too resource-intensive on the provider. http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Warrior http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Warrior
- tomstockmail 11y ago
  What does archiveteam do differently than The Internet Archive? It wasn't clear to me reading their about page, as well as some odd main projects with IRC channels being a main goal.
  - detaro 11y ago
    They try to do complete crawls of sites (mostly of user-generated content) that are known to go offline soon or at high risk of doing so, vs the Internet Archive crawler which as far as I know crawls everything every now and then. If a siteowner is willing to hand over a data export to archive.org or another archival site they don't have to do that, but not many do.
royelsan 11y ago
Oh, this is what I'm (currently) doing. I got the same message, and it most assuredly was surprising. Admittedly, having that many boxes has been kind of fun...
kuschku 11y ago
I got the mail in early april, and it, in fact, even violates German law (promotional coupons and promotional credit, if not otherwise specified, is valid for 3 years, and can not be revoked via ToS changes). But I do not wish to sue, as it would just cause me a lot of trouble, and I’d rather spend the money on a hoster I can actually trust. Instead of a hoster violating laws and frauding customers out of their legal credit.
- hrrsn 11y ago
  DO are not bound by German laws.
  - Matt3o12_ 11y ago
    If they have German customers, they are bound to German laws because they are doing business in Germany. Sure it will not apply to American DO customers, but if they to have German customers, they are bound by their local laws and those laws apply to protect citizens of that nation.
    - the_ancient 11y ago
      >If they have German customers, they are bound to German laws because they are doing business in Germany. that is simply not true... Now for DO it might be because they have EU possibly even German Data centers but simply because a Citizen of Germany visits a web site and signs up for a online service does not automatically make german laws apply to that business. Now it possible you could sue in Germany, the American business would ignore you, and any judgment you got from a German Court would likely be unenforceable in the US
      - true_religion 11y ago
        > DO it might be because they have EU possibly even German Data centers but simply because a Citizen of Germany visits a web site and signs up for a online service does not automatically make german laws apply to that business. Are you saying this because you are extrapolating from American law regarding whether a company has a 'nexus' within a given state, or perhaps thinking about taxation? In those specific cases, what you are saying is true, but in general national-level governments do not care that foreign companies are not actually headquartered within their borders. They demand (arrogantly one might say) that all companies doing business with their citizens follow X,Y,Z rules or else they'll try to sanction the company. Granted if a company is truly foreign then any sanction would be pretty limited in scope. However, easy sanction is to stop credit card processors and banking agencies from dealing with a foreign company thus stopping your citizens from easily giving them money.
jonalmeida 11y ago
I received this email as well and a friend recommended I donate the server uptime to boinc[1] which can make better use of it than trying to find something to use it on. [1]: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ https://boinc.berkeley.edu/
- mappu 11y ago
  My charity of choice was GIMPS ( http://www.mersenne.org/ http://www.mersenne.org/ ).
reitanqild 11y ago
Did you try asking for an exception? I see others in this discussion have done. Also based on my experience with DO (small ex customer, on aws now) it absolutely wouldn't seem out of character for them to fix that.
uggedal 11y ago
To compare I currently have $8,194.54 credit with Linode which I received through referrals. I've had most of them for over 6 years[1]. [1] http://uggedal.com/journal/vps-performance-comparison/ http://uggedal.com/journal/vps-performance-comparison/

by BoppreH 11y ago

joeyrobert 11y ago

Do it, they're incentivizing you to bring up 8 VMs or 1 really big VM.

kevincox 11y ago
Yeah, but I don't have the use for 8VMs. Give me notice and I will try to use it up. But don't give me a month, I can't effectively use that in time. I can waste it, sure. But that's not the point of the credit in the first place.

onli 11y ago

> I didn't get this March 2015 email or any reminders since I checked my emails as well when I got that. There was no notification in March or since of that change.

detaro 11y ago

If people are looking for a way to use up credit and want to support something useful, run an Archiveteam Warrior. Helps to archive (soon-to-be) dead websites and and isn't too resource-intensive on the provider. http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Warrior http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Warrior

tomstockmail 11y ago
What does archiveteam do differently than The Internet Archive? It wasn't clear to me reading their about page, as well as some odd main projects with IRC channels being a main goal.
- detaro 11y ago
  They try to do complete crawls of sites (mostly of user-generated content) that are known to go offline soon or at high risk of doing so, vs the Internet Archive crawler which as far as I know crawls everything every now and then. If a siteowner is willing to hand over a data export to archive.org or another archival site they don't have to do that, but not many do.

royelsan 11y ago

Oh, this is what I'm (currently) doing. I got the same message, and it most assuredly was surprising. Admittedly, having that many boxes has been kind of fun...

kuschku 11y ago

I got the mail in early april, and it, in fact, even violates German law (promotional coupons and promotional credit, if not otherwise specified, is valid for 3 years, and can not be revoked via ToS changes). But I do not wish to sue, as it would just cause me a lot of trouble, and I’d rather spend the money on a hoster I can actually trust. Instead of a hoster violating laws and frauding customers out of their legal credit.

hrrsn 11y ago
DO are not bound by German laws.
- Matt3o12_ 11y ago
  If they have German customers, they are bound to German laws because they are doing business in Germany. Sure it will not apply to American DO customers, but if they to have German customers, they are bound by their local laws and those laws apply to protect citizens of that nation.
  - the_ancient 11y ago
    >If they have German customers, they are bound to German laws because they are doing business in Germany. that is simply not true... Now for DO it might be because they have EU possibly even German Data centers but simply because a Citizen of Germany visits a web site and signs up for a online service does not automatically make german laws apply to that business. Now it possible you could sue in Germany, the American business would ignore you, and any judgment you got from a German Court would likely be unenforceable in the US
    - true_religion 11y ago
      > DO it might be because they have EU possibly even German Data centers but simply because a Citizen of Germany visits a web site and signs up for a online service does not automatically make german laws apply to that business. Are you saying this because you are extrapolating from American law regarding whether a company has a 'nexus' within a given state, or perhaps thinking about taxation? In those specific cases, what you are saying is true, but in general national-level governments do not care that foreign companies are not actually headquartered within their borders. They demand (arrogantly one might say) that all companies doing business with their citizens follow X,Y,Z rules or else they'll try to sanction the company. Granted if a company is truly foreign then any sanction would be pretty limited in scope. However, easy sanction is to stop credit card processors and banking agencies from dealing with a foreign company thus stopping your citizens from easily giving them money.

jonalmeida 11y ago

I received this email as well and a friend recommended I donate the server uptime to boinc[1] which can make better use of it than trying to find something to use it on. [1]: https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

mappu 11y ago
My charity of choice was GIMPS ( http://www.mersenne.org/ http://www.mersenne.org/ ).

reitanqild 11y ago

Did you try asking for an exception? I see others in this discussion have done. Also based on my experience with DO (small ex customer, on aws now) it absolutely wouldn't seem out of character for them to fix that.

uggedal 11y ago

To compare I currently have $8,194.54 credit with Linode which I received through referrals. I've had most of them for over 6 years[1]. [1] http://uggedal.com/journal/vps-performance-comparison/ http://uggedal.com/journal/vps-performance-comparison/