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Comment by abpavel | Hacker News Reader

I love both GitLab and DigitalOcean, but why do I feel so devalued by IT deflation? The longer I'm part of something and the more effort I put into promoting a platform, the less perks I get. Why? I understand the importance of new customers, but why do you alienate the loyal user-base that made you what you are today? Are we rewarding ignorance now?

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At GitLab we try to cherish our contributors. Every month we celebrate a most valuable contributor https://about.gitlab.com/mvp/

We try to ship great new features in our open source version every month that you can use for free on your server and on GitLab.com

EDIT I can't comment for DigitalOcean, what follows is my personal opinion.

I think it is great that DigitalOcean is willing to both sponsor the Runners for GitLab.com and offer promotion codes. Although I understand with your wish for promotion codes for existing customers I also understand their decision to only apply this to new customers in order to make this cost effective.

I hope that as an existing DigitalOcean customer you enjoy the benefits of their cost-effective servers, quick boot time, great UX, and the templates and tutorials that they keep updating.

The thing is that I would enjoy it as well if I just signed up. I actually feel offended by that.

I'm sorry to hear that. I edited my answer to make clear it was my opinion as GitLab CEO, I'm not speaking for DigitalOcean.

You're getting free CI runners where you had none. Is that not enough benefit? It's not as if there is a scale where newbies get EVERYTHING and vets of 10+ years get nothing.

New? Here is a small incentive.

Not new? Thanks for using the product, check out these fresh features!

Customer retention is as valuable as new customers.

more valuable

I'd eat my hat if you could produce a customer who departs over not receiving a $10 coupon.

Because people need to eat.

Eat what? Other people? Not sure what you're getting at, because I'm paying my membership dues, and I'm quite sure you're not living on less than $1/day either.

My point is that you're expecting something for free because you've evangelized in the past. There is no such thing as "influence" royalties.

Not yet, at least.

Avoid making cavalier assumptions about others' circumstances.

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