IANAL but I don't see that a violation. As long as he isn't selling or renting it out for a price then he is fine. I have a feeling that provision is there to make sure people don't try to sell credits, screw over the buyer, then the buyer tries to complain to Amazon.

Steam has a similar stipulation - and a lot of people are pissed about it. Basically you can't buy or sell steam accounts - and if you are caught Valve will suspend the account. I personally think it's completely stupid and if actually challenged would not hold up in court (I think the first sale doctrine fits perfectly because if you sell your steam account then the games are no longer accessible to you). But again - I get why, they don't want to put up with scammers or stupid people who try to sell an account and disappear before they send the credentials.

> You may not sell, license, rent, or otherwise transfer Promotional Credit. Promotional Credit may be applied only to your AWS account, and may not be applied to any other account.

Seems pretty clear to me...

> You may not sell, license, rent

He's giving it away, no money changing hands.

> or otherwise transfer Promotional credit

Is what he has "promotional" credit? He says he has credit... is there a difference? If there is, then that quote doesn't apply. If they are the same thing, and it's used on his account?

If there is no "sale" or "transfer", then yes... it is clear: He's fine to use it as he wishes.

Yes, if he bought $8,000 in AWS credits then he can use it as he wants, but I doubt this kind soul is trying to just throw out $8k.

This is very very likely promotional credit. They hand it out like candy.

Edit: Okay, I can see that if his approach is to use it on his own account, but for someone else's purposes, then it's probably fine. I don't think they even have any system to transfer AWS credits

Edit2: Then again I would be wary of publicly announcing that I'm actively trying to use my AWS credits for other people even though I'm not technically "transferring" them...

-yup its a promotional credit (started at 10k), i didnt really buy it -nope I can't transfer it -yes my approach was simply to give the person/people access to my account -Its my fucking server and I can run whatever script I see fit .. but ok realistically maybe its not the best idea to give it to a commercial startup/project that has a legal entity to be sued. but I don't think its really that big of a deal to run some crawlers

Be careful the AWS police will get you.

If he does the computations and simply gives the results as a donation is that transferring?

I would argue no - what would be the difference between him spinning up VMs and handing off the credentials and hosting a public web service on it? The VMs are still his responsibility - he is just allowing other people to use them.