> 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.