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Get free Claude max 20x for open-source maintainers

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Re: Get free Claude max 20x for open-source maintainers

#221

Post by overgard »

janalsncm wrote: post #201
overgard wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, is a free trial really a gift? Especially if the thing they're trialing is built off the data you're giving them? To be fair it does have a pretty significant monetary value (which can't be transferred..), but personally it feels a little off

It is a gift of six months of the service. And I don’t think being built using OSS matters here? For example, if AWS gave Linux maintainers free EC2 instances it wouldn’t feel off. I think what you’re getting at involves more data that was scraped illegally. Like if Anthropic gave free Claude access to writers since it just lost a lawsuit related to copyrighted books, that would be kind of a slap in the face. But OSS…

I think I'm more getting at the spirit of open source/free software, which is of social reciprocity. I think it's kind of ugly to train on programmers work with the explicit goal of putting those programmers out of work. (And based on their comments, that does seem to be Anthropic's goal -- they're not of the "this will help you do your job better" camp)

Re: Get free Claude max 20x for open-source maintainers

#223

Post by kelnos »

lanyard-textile wrote: post #34
stavros wrote: post #10

I like what GitHub and Jetbrains are doing, where you get Copilot and PyCharm for free as long as you're a maintainer. They keep renewing my license. A 6-month trial isn't showing appreciation for OSS any more than "first crack hit's free" is showing appreciation for what a good person you are. It's just "you look like a promising customer".

It's a spectrum, right? It would be showing greater higher quality appreciation to offer an ongoing benefit. But there is some benefit to giving maintainers a generous trial length with your offering. 6 months is certainly long enough to see how well it does or does not incorporate into your project. It just so happens we almost all universally love the offering.

It's a marketing/sales tactic. I already have a Claude Pro subscription. I use it quite a bit, and do hit the limits often enough (sometimes needing to wait 2-3 hours before it resets), but I'm not convinced I want to spend more on the Max subscription, even though I do get a ton of value out of it.

Giving me Max 20x for 6 months would just get me hooked more on it to the point that I'd likely upgrade my subscription after the free period is over. Or I'd just go back to Pro and feel shittier about it.

If they were giving it away for free indefinitely, then that would actually be generous and altruistic. I don't think it's a spectrum; I think nothing free is one thing, some defined period of free is a sales tactic, and free indefinitely/forever is actual generosity.

But hey, I applied anyway; we'll see.

Re: Get free Claude max 20x for open-source maintainers

#224

Post by cagz »

sfblah wrote: post #219
jonchurch_ wrote: post #157

Folks saying this offer is in bad faith or not generous enough dont seem to understand how low the bar is here for rewarding maintainers. I maintain Express.js and Lodash, as well as a number of express direct deps (as a TC member of both Express and Lodash). OSS has been my fulltime focus for over a year (aka Im unemployed). In 2025 I made $10 from open source, in the form of an amazon gift card for fixing a bug in…

What's the best way for a teenager to get involved in one of the projects you maintain? I've been trying to help my kid find an entry point into the industry, and I'm one of those annoying folks who relies on open source but rarely contributes.

Assuming they've got reasonable programming skills. They can simply find an open-source project they are passionate about. Spend time understanding the overall structure. Then pick up an issue raised by the community and prepare a fix as a pull request.

The first PR is unlikely to be merged the next day; however, it sparks lots of productive discussions with the rest of the community, allowing your kid to build a mental model of the project's best practices and sensitivities.

The more he contributes, the more integral he becomes to the community. After gaining enough experience through small issues, they can even consider working on a new feature.

As a byproduct, a great addition to the CV if they are also looking to go commercial.

Re: Get free Claude max 20x for open-source maintainers

#225

Post by kelnos »

pigpop wrote: post #169
stavros wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, no, I'd like it much more if it were an ongoing offering of the $20 plan than a one-off of the $200 plan. The latter just screams of sales tactic.

The 20x plan is much more useful if you use it full time. Trying to put a full 8 hour workday in on the $20 plan is painful since you have to stop when you reach your usage limit and that comes up quickly at that tier. The 20x plan is enough to have multiple independent Claude Code sessions running in parallel working on different features or bugs without hitting limits (unless you've got a lot of sessions going).

Yup. I have the $20 plan, and I've been focusing full time (and then some) on my open source projects. I usually hit the limit 2-3 hours into the 5-hour limit window, and have to wait for it to reset.

In a way it's kinda nice, because it forces me not to rely on it too much, and I mostly use it for more mechanical changes, nothing that I'd consider "creative" (because I enjoy that part of programming!). But it's also frustrating if I'm, say, building a planning document or getting suggestions or help with debugging, and suddenly I hit the limit and have to context switch.

So if I get into this program, I will probably enjoy Max 20x a lot, and then be really bummed when the 6-month period is over. Not sure if I'll be bummed enough to fork over the cash for it to continue, but I'm sure I will be very tempted to do so.

Re: Get free Claude max 20x for open-source maintainers

#226

Post by harrall »

davidw wrote: post #218
DANmode wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the leading plan to combat that?

I don't know if there is one. There are models people can run on fairly expensive hardware at home, but will those be 'good enough' compared to the heavier duty resources that a big, well-funded corporation can deploy? Like... while the open source models are improving, does that converge with the fancy models with tons of money behind them? My understanding of the economics of it - so far - is that "more computing r…

Computers took like 3 decades before they weren’t just for the rich either.

In the late 70s, personal computers were still like $4-8k (in today’s money). It wasn’t until the 90s when regular people started getting computers.

So there is one… just time.

Re: Get free Claude max 20x for open-source maintainers

#227

Post by cagz »

overgard wrote: post #190
jonchurch_ wrote: post #157

Folks saying this offer is in bad faith or not generous enough dont seem to understand how low the bar is here for rewarding maintainers. I maintain Express.js and Lodash, as well as a number of express direct deps (as a TC member of both Express and Lodash). OSS has been my fulltime focus for over a year (aka Im unemployed). In 2025 I made $10 from open source, in the form of an amazon gift card for fixing a bug in…

I dunno, is a free trial really a gift? Especially if the thing they're trialing is built off the data you're giving them? To be fair it does have a pretty significant monetary value (which can't be transferred..), but personally it feels a little off

The use of data for model training is a simple toggle, very easy to opt out of during the initial setup.

Also, the end product is open source anyway, so there is no case of IP being leaked into training data. What remains is that they can use, with your permission, the overall coding practices of a great programmer to fine-tune Claude's code and models. As in, how one approaches planning or troubleshooting. Is this a bad thing? Perhaps every maintainer should decide for themselves whether they want to contribute back or not.

Re: Get free Claude max 20x for open-source maintainers

#228

Post by kelnos »

TuxSH wrote: post #183
saulpw wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no non-disparagement clause, so how about you left them use your name etc, and then you can come out in public and say those mean things and shame/embarrass them.

Sure, but what I'm slightly worried about is people easily resolving my username to my real name. Maybe I worry too much, dunno

That's fair, but I think it's also not unreasonable for Anthropic to want some sort of "compensation" for giving something away for free (even if it's just a paltry 6-months, which screams "sales tactic"). The terms around getting free stuff sometimes have things that aren't compatible with something about how we do things, and that's fine; we just don't get to take advantage of the free stuff.

Re: Get free Claude max 20x for open-source maintainers

#229

Post by kelnos »

marcandre wrote: post #147
upmind wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep agreed, this isn't a nice thing they're doing, it's just a ploy for more customers. Shame.

I don't get these negative comments for them giving free credits. Either it's "Not many people fit these criteria" or "A ploy for more customers". It can't be both, and I believe it's neither. It's a nice gesture, in line with Github Copilot and JetBrains. Disclosure: I have free Copilot and just applied for 20x Pro.

I mean, some people can have one of your quoted opinions, and some people can have the other. That's fine, people can not like this for their own reasons.

I applied for this, but it puts a bad taste in my mouth. I've been working on open source for over 20 years now, and while I don't expect any compensation, being offered something like this feels a little icky. If they really want to "thank" me, give it to me for free indefinitely. They've benefited immeasurably from all the open source code they've sucked in as training data. Their product literally would not exist without it.

Re: Get free Claude max 20x for open-source maintainers

#230

Post by kelnos »

kvark wrote: post #222

Sadly the form doesn't even show up in Firefox. If they want to appeal to computer nerds, gotta anticipate not everyone will be on Blink engine.

Yeah, I was very confused, opened up Chromium and there it was.

It's so weird to think that you can build a webpage where you do something so incredibly "fancy" that one (sadly now minority) fully-featured web browser can't display a simple web form.

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