[japhyr]

You're absolutely right that some individuals will be able to sign up for this program, and remember to cancel at the end of the six months. However, when companies choose to implement a policy like this they're acting on well-established statistics. They know that a meaningful percentage of people will forget to cancel, and the company will end up with increased revenue. There might be a bit of good will here, but in the end a program like this with these clearly-spelled-out terms is not much more than marketing.

This feels especially ugly to me because maintainers of large open source projects will feel pressure to keep using tools that let them work in an AI-assisted world. This really feels like it will make life harder for open source maintainers in the end, rather than easier. That's the opposite of what a meaningful open source campaign should look like.

At the very least, it puts maintainers right back in the position of having to beg giant companies for handouts.

[skybrian]

It seems like the average payoff is not so relevant if you have good reason to believe you can do better than average. Also, I'm not so sure Anthropic would profit from this particular offer in the average case.

I recently downgraded from Opus to Sonnet because it's 40% cheaper and it needs a bit more guidance but seems doable. There will likely be better deals.