If some Reddit posts are to be believed, Digital Ocean is ending its Open Source Credits program quietly:

DigitalOcean has decided to sunset the Open Source Credits Program. As part of this change, we are no longer accepting new credit applications or approving credit renewals, extensions, or additional credit requests.

All this is based on a GitHub issue where the maintainers of the Node.js project received an email from Digital Ocean notifying them about the sunset of the Open Source Credits program.

What was the Open Source Credits program?

Digital Ocean is a cloud server infrastructure provider. It ran this “Open Source Credits” program and under this scheme, they gave approved open-source projects cloud credits to cover infrastructure costs. This helped project maintainers run their projects without paying the hosting bill.

For example, Node.js used DigitalOcean infrastructure for its build operations, including virtual servers, storage, snapshots and backups.

For years, Digital Ocean promoted this program and invited projects to apply to this program by sending them a message via opensource@digitalocean.com.

This seems to have changed now.

Sunsetting the Open Source Credits program?

Note that there is no official announcement on DigitalOcean’s blog or social media handles.

From what I see, there is a GitHub issue where Node.js maintainers discuss this email.

Digital Ocean ending its Open Source Credit Program

There is also a Reddit thread, but the OP doesn’t mention if they received the email themselves or which open source project they maintained.

I have scanned Reddit, X and some other social media platform but have’t picked up any signals from other open source projects, yet.

Node.js is a big project and discussion is real. So, we can safely say that Digital Ocean is indeed working on ending this program.

Projects in the program won’t receive new credits. The will have to manage with whatever credits that have been issued so far. After that, either they pay to Digital Ocean or move their projects to some other platform provider.

The mail also mentions that new projects will no longer be accepted in the program and the inbox (opensource@digitalocean.com) dedicated for this task will no longer be monitored. That closes the door for new applicants.

A mutual partnership

Programs such as this are a mutually beneficial arrangement. When DigitalOcean offered credits, these projects spun up their CI runners, their documentation sites, their release mirrors, and their testing environments on DigitalOcean infrastructure.

In return, they mentioned Digital Ocean in the project website and documentation. Thousands of developers learned about DigitalOcean’s platform through these projects. Some become paying customers individually, whereas some bring it into the companies they worked for.

Both involved parties get something positive from Open Source Credits like programs.

Digital Ocean has been reducing its free offering

This is not the first time DigitalOcean has trimmed its community-facing programs without a clear announcement.

Earlier this year, the GitHub Student Pack credits were removed from DigitalOcean’s offerings too. Students trying to redeem the standard $200 in free credits found they were no longer receiving them. Again, there were no formal announcements (because it is a bad outlook). So all you will find is community questions by confused users.

Digital Ocean offers $100 free credit (our partner link) to every new user. This program still runs today (so far). Not sure how long this will be offered, though.

Node got Digital Ocean support back

In the same GitHub issue, Node developers discussed their exit strategy. It then led to a discussion of removing Digital Ocean from the homepage, README and partners page.

And as soon as that happened, Digita Ocean reached out with olive branch.

Notice the use of “what version 2.0 of the program looks like” line? This is either a coverup strategy or an actual revamp of the existing program that will be more selective about which projects will be allowed in the program.

The GitHub issue was then promptly renamed from “Transitioning off of Digital Ocean” to “Solidify Digital Ocean Partnership”.

Other open source projects might not be lucky

Node.js is a big project popular with developers of all kinds. Getting their name and link removed when their competitors, like Vercel, are still mentioned on Node.js homepage is something Digital Ocean could not afford.

But not all open source projects are going to get that kind of happy ending. If the closure of the program is indeed true, the smaller projects are going to think about infrastructure bills and move.

When maintainers are already drowning in AI slop pull requests and bug reports, this is going to put additional strain on the maintainers.

Hopefully, some newer infrastructure providers will come up with similar programs. No harm in thinking positive.

If you are an open source project maintainer who got this Open Source Credits program closure email, please reach out to us.

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