Stream: coqbot devs & users

Topic: End of Heroku free plan.

Théo Zimmermann (Aug 25 2022 at 19:06):

After GitLab and DockerHub, it looks like we're also going to need to ask for open source sponsorship to Heroku (which is where coqbot is hosted): https://blog.heroku.com/next-chapter

Théo Zimmermann (Aug 25 2022 at 19:06):

Though, it's likely that the cost of running it would actually be affordable.

Ali Caglayan (Aug 25 2022 at 22:16):

Should we think about switching to another service provider?

Théo Zimmermann (Aug 26 2022 at 08:05):

I'm open to that, but my experience with Heroku has been good, and I am used to the associated monitoring tools, so I wouldn't drive that change (if we can stay on Heroku).

Erik Martin-Dorel (Aug 31 2022 at 21:48):

@Théo Zimmermann FWIW, I saw this tweet recently:

https://twitter.com/framaka/status/1563923029067005952

"In the future all software will be open source" Article original de @andrestaltz qui postule que tout logiciel non libre connaîtra un jour ou l'autre une alternative libre, et de calculer alors son "TTOSA" Time Till Open Source Alternative https://staltz.com/time-till-open-source-alternative.html https://twitter.com/framaka/status/1563923029067005952/photo/1

- Alexis Kauffmann (@framaka)

which mentions Dokku, which seems to be an open-source platform making any regular VM into an Heroku-compliant PaaS:

Powered by Docker, you can install Dokku on any hardware. Use it on inexpensive cloud providers. (…)
Once it's set up on a host, you can push Heroku-compatible applications to it via Git. They'll build using Heroku buildpacks and then run in isolated containers. The end result is your own, single-host version of Heroku.

Théo Zimmermann (Sep 01 2022 at 07:13):

Thanks, but we are already pretty Heroku-independent in terms of infrastructure. What we deploy on Heroku is a Docker image that could already theoretically run anywhere. Our use of Heroku is just to have a hosting service that we do not need to manage, with logging facilities, where we can automatically restart the bot if it crashes, if we deploy a new version, if we change an environment variable...

Théo Zimmermann (Nov 22 2022 at 14:49):

An update about this:

• The end of the Free plan is still scheduled for November 28th. Heroku has introduced a new "Eco" plan for $5/month which corresponds to what the Free plan used to offer. This confirms that the cost of running coqbot on Heroku should stay reasonable, even if they ended up not sponsoring us.
• I've "subscribed" to this plan (although the credit card they have saved for me certainly expired a long time ago). They say they won't charge anything before Dec 1st.
• I've received an email saying that they haven't yet decided how to process the open source sponshorship requests that they've received, so in the meantime they will offer credits to continue using Heroku free until the end of January. I had to fill a form to get the credits. I just hope that the credits will be received before Dec 1st, otherwise if they attempt to charge my credit card and it fails, we may have a temporary issue with the bot.

Théo Zimmermann (Nov 29 2022 at 10:07):

FWIW, we've received credits that should allow us to keep running for 4 more months, while they examine further our application.

Jason Gross (Jan 23 2023 at 19:36):

Any updates on this?

Théo Zimmermann (Jan 24 2023 at 09:42):

Sorry, I should have posted that they have granted us a sponsorship, so there is nothing to worry about regarding the coqbot hosting.

Last updated: Apr 19 2024 at 22:01 UTC