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Thank You, Mike (@msatt) and the FOSSVPS Team
Hello everyone,
I'm Mustafa. An Iraqi student living in Iran. I have no ID or any other documentation because I'm stateless. No bank account. No real job. No real way to prove I exist on paper like others.
In the recent war that happened between the US and Iran for ninety days, the internet here was completely gone. No connection to my family. No connection to my friends back home. No connection to anything outside. It was like the whole world just vanished and I was left in a room with nothing.
When the internet finally came back, I was searching for ways to get my projects back up and running and I needed resources and so I kept searching and then I found FOSSVPS. I applied with my project and a lot of hope. Somehow, I got approved.
And that's when I met Mike.
I don't know how else to say this, the guy is an angel. I was completely lost. I didn't know what I was doing half the time. But Mike never once made me feel stupid. He answered every question, fixed every problem, and stayed with me through everything, even when I'm sure I was exhausting him.
He replied late at night. He debugged things that weren't even his job. He rebuilt my server when it wouldn't boot. He fixed access when things broke. And through all of it, he had a patience I never seen in anyone.
he told me something I'll carry forever:
"A developer needs experience. You are at the beginning of a long learning curve and if you persist I am sure you can achieve what you wish."
He didn't have to say that. He didn't have to believe in me. But he did. And that's who Mike is, someone who gives hope to people who have none.
Now this VPS is my lifeline. It's how I learn. It's how I build my project. It's how I stay connected to the world when everything around me is closed off. Without it, I'd be back in that silence with no way forward.
Mike didn't just give me a server. He gave me a chance. And he kept giving it, again and again, even when things got messy. He never gave up on me. I'm so grateful he didn't.
I also want to thank the donors:
ST-Hosting,
JetNode,
Alexhost,
And
MSATT.
None of this happens without you. You're making a real difference for people like me. If you can support FOSSVPS in any way, please do. It's not just about the servers. It's about the lives they touch.
And Mike, if you're reading this,
Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. You're my hero. You took someone who had nothing and treated him like he mattered. You told me I could achieve something. You made me believe it.
I'm going to keep going. I'm going to build things. I'm going to become the person you said I could be.
And I'll never forget that you were the first one to say it.
Comments
Shoutout to Mike! @msatt love the support for the community 🙏
Best of luck out there Mustafa
@mustwoah You have my sympathy, as being stateless means there's huge resistance to sign up for everything. Did you grew up stateless or because of government revoked your citizenship? Is there anyone to support people like yourself in Iran?
Can you tell me what kind of project you want to build?
What a homie, keeping the Mike name in high reputation.
happy to see that fossvps has a great positive influence on someone. thumbs up
Hi @mustwoah what a pleasure to see such a post. It has really made me happy and I am sure our generous donors - @Alexhost, @Hosteroid and @st-hosting feel good about it too.
Yes you are on your journey both in life and career so have faith even if things get bad there are always people willing to help.
Mike.
I wasn't even surprised by OP's experience because that's just the way @msatt ticks and acts.
Kudos and a big THANK YOU, Mike
Hi @msatt, it really means the world to me to see you happy and pleased.
You and @Alexhost, @Hosteroid, and @st-hosting-you're all part of something that genuinely changes lives. I really hope you feel how deep that is. I can't thank you all enough, especially you, Mike.
To be honest, I never give myself the right to ask for help. I always feel like I'd be a burden on anyone. But then people like you show up and remind me that pure kindness still exists. And that makes all the difference.
When you say to keep faith even when things get bad, that hit me hard. Because it feels like everything is stacked against me right now. But the hope you give me shows me there's light at the end of the tunnel.
So I'll keep going. I'll keep pushing. I'll reach what's meant for me, inshallah.
And I'll never forget that you were the one who helped me take the first step.
Thank you, Mike. From every part of me.
Thank you, Hassan.
Mike is truly one of a kind,this community is blessed to have him.
Wishing you all the best as well!
Thank you @rpqu. I really appreciate your sympathy, it's not something I come across often.
I was born stateless. My father was a revolutionary prisoner in Iraq, waiting for his death sentence. He managed to escape from prison before the execution and made his way to Iran, where he met my mother, and I was born. That's how my story began, before I even got to have any choice.
Being stateless has affected everything. No education system would take me properly. No job is legal for me. No bank account. No ID that anyone recognizes. The government here doesn't even acknowledge people like us exist, they give us paper for every basic human need, like school, hospital treatments, and traveling from city to city. There's no support, no rights, no future on paper. I can't get a real job because it's against the law. So I work daily temporary labor jobs just to help put food on the table for my family.
But I couldn't accept that as my story. So in my free time, I started to learn English just from watching movies and TV shows on my phone. Then I took my father's laptop and taught myself everything I could...graphic design, web development, music production, video editing etc. All from YouTube and free resources I could find.
When I turned 18, I went to the Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigrant Affairs and asked them for a solution to study at university. They gave me a permit to study at a local state university, but the condition was that while it's free for everyone else, I have to pay. And I can't even graduate because there's no document to register the degree to. I had high hopes but unfortunately now that I'm a student, I realize I made a big mistake, all the materials are outdated and there are no resources to learn properly. So I have to keep doing everything all on my own because I have no other way.
Before the war, I was building a webapp that lets you turn any URL into an Android app using Flutter and GitHub Actions. It was working. I had hope. But now I'm realizing I need to go deeper into AI, agents, new technologies, because maybe that's where my way out is...I'm creative. I love learning new things. And I have to find a way to survive...
Anyway, I don't want to bore you with a long story and take any of your precious time. If you're interested to know more, I'd love to tell you more about my situation, my life, etc. Just knowing someone cares enough to ask means more than you know.
Thank you again for the nice comment.
Another awesome Mike, I see! Thank you, MikeA. Honestly, anyone named Mike is a legend in my book now and our Mike is setting the bar sky-high.
FOSSVPS truly is something special for sure.
Couldn't have said it better, Mike is the real deal 😊
Story reads a bit like a movie script, @mustwoah Glad the support was good, but what's the actual project you're hosting?
Well done @mustwoah for explaining your situation. Often many of us do not realise how hard it is for others and we get screaming kids / mjj's demanding all sorts of things. If only they realised how hard it can be for some.
I think for the benefit of openness I should say I had no idea of your full back story, only that you needed some help. Now that WE know your story I am sure there will be many more offering you support.
When / if you need more 'power' for your development work just get in touch and I would be only too happy to oblige.
Once again thank you for posting this thread as it benefits everyone
Mike
Not a movie, just the life I was born into.
The support gave me the push to keep going when my life was at its lowest point. I just got the VPS recently, so I'm still setting things up and learning as I go. I work on it at night in my only free time, it's all I've got now. I don't have any other resources.
Before the war and the 90-day internet outage in Iran, I was working on an open-source browser-based tool that turns any website into a native Android app. You configure it in the browser, it generates a Flutter project, pushes it to your GitHub, and GitHub Actions compiles the APK.
Right now, I'm starting fresh. I'm focused on building an AI OCR system for old Persian and Arabic books into clean digital formats. I got the idea when I saw my brother struggle with old books in his studies and research as a seminary student. Still early stages, but that's where my energy is going now, pushing to learn more, gathering data and tools to shape the idea into a real product for real-life use.
There are open-source projects that already handle Arabic/Persian OCR, but I want to figure out a way with AI automation combining that with image restoration for damaged manuscripts to get better quality results.
Thanks for asking.
@msatt Is that actually a customer?
@angstrom In all good words, but multi account?
Registered in may and what comes is directly this one thread.
From the beginning I've been sensing something odd in the original post, some strange vibes emanating from it.
There is lots of interesting work being done right now on OCR training for ancient scripts. You could probably start by looking at the work done for benchmarking Chandra so you can figure out where to improve. I know a few people using it in their history research, although if you're lacking in VRAM and GPUs prepare for extremely long run times.
For restoring really old text, you're probably going to want to look into fancier equipment like XRF scans that would help you find remnants of stuff like faded paint. The really good XRF tech has good enough spatial resolution that it could pick out stuff like faded letters; you could make interesting progress for the field by trying to train something to "fill in the blanks" of letter shapes via what remnants XRF picks up plus whatever can be visually spotted, although that's a hard data reanalysis project. Many academic groups / museums / galleries are doing mass-scans of their whole catalogues, perhaps they could send you some datasets... Hopefully some of what I've written helps you.
I agree that it's all a little suspect, but of course, it's hard to say for sure ...
( @msatt seems convinced)
In any case, I guess that he was able to bypass the usual requirements for a VPS from FOSSVPS: at the time of his application for a VPS, neither was he active on LET, nor did he have any posts, nor did he have any thanks for his (non-existent) posts, nor was his LET account at least three months old
I can say that Mustafa is definitely a client of FOSSVPS and that I did genuinely provide (a lot) support to him.
I have no reason to believe there is anything dodgy - as to duplicate account I have no idea.
Update - applied 29 May 2026, 11:34 claimed a referral by a well known LET user. I told him to join LET first before considering any VPS allocation.
My only slight concern is Mustafa registered at fossvps as Mostafa
Those are both equivalent transliterations of مصطفى. I wouldn't be too surprised that someone who doesn't normally Romanize it would use multiple spellings interchangeably.
Ah, a shoot in your own leg then. As FVPS would need a reliable account, you locked in externals. But its your thing. Bad for nodeseek users.