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Comment by dfc | Hacker News Reader

What policy does "grandfathered customers" refer to?

Grandfathered users are our early adopter customers.

When we do large rollouts we usually release new features to them first in a limited public beta test so we can collect feedback. They have been extremely helpful in helping us to find and resolve bugs before we move a feature to general release.

Thanks, Moisey Cofounder DigitalOcean

In my opinion you need to use a better term than grandfathered. I think you have a different understanding of the term than the general population. Grandfathered is not used to distinguish early adopter, developer partner, platinum/double diamond customer loyalty card, etc from the general customer pool. As witnessed in the comment below grandfathered users are the population of users that do not get screwed by a new policy.

I think you should take a look at the wikipedia page for grandfather clauses and reassess if you think this is a word you want to associate with a new feature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause

Thanks, dfc. English speaking potential customer

Initially they had no bandwidth charges. Upon introducing them, the customer base was "grandfathered" in to free bandwidth. I assume this is the set of customers they are referring to, so it doesn't kind of make sense...but only if familiar with the history of DO.

Here is the deal: You cannot "grandfather" a newly created privilege to a select population--a population that never received the privilege before--if for no other reason than the privilege did not exist in the past. The grandfather bit is not only a connection to the origin of the term but also a hint about proper usage: people in the past (grandma could not vote) must have been able to and did enjoy the privilege at some point in the past.

I did not want to come off like a strict scrutiny word maven (synonym: dickhead) when I wrote my first comment because it would obscure the larger point: "grandfathered clauses" have negative connotations for new/potential customers. My goal was to be helpful and not to strut my lexicographic tail feathers.

pedantic might be a better synonym. ;)

Grandfathered is an internal term that, to be honest, we didn't expect to see on hackernews, grandfathered for us refers to customers that will never be billed for bandwidth as when we started we offered unlimited bandwidth plan. Users who are grandfathered just typically tend to be our beta group, as they well know. :)

John, Chief Technology Evangelist, DigitalOcean.

I saw that and wondered what it meant... hopefully they aren't going to try and charge customers for IPv6 addresses. Most hosts give those out for free.

There aren't any charges for IPv6.

Thanks, Moisey Cofounder DigitalOcean

Imagine that, being able to sell each addy in a ::/32 for a cent each. You'd practically be the entire economy at that point.

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