6 ms·

Why is it ~twice as expensive as a per-user license? Right now we just reimburse our analysts/developers the $10/month for the Copilot fees. I see no reason to

Why is it ~twice as expensive as a per-user license? Right now we just reimburse our analysts/developers the $10/month for the Copilot fees. I see no reason to go to a more expensive plan just so we can manage their licenses. The following add-ons for an additional $108/year per person don't seem worth it at all. [0] -Simple license management (what's simpler than reimbursing personal expenses?) -Organization-wide policy management (huh?) -Industry-leading privacy (no idea what this means, how is this better than personal Copilot per person) -Corporate proxy support (what even is this) EDIT: How do you do single line breaks on HN, anyway? Markdown doesn't work (two spaces or backslashes) and the help docs don't specify: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc [0]: Plus, the individuals don't get their credit card rewards. Employees love expensing things for free rewards.

tssva 4y ago
Expecting your employees to provide you monthly loans to cover recurring expenses is a pretty poor policy.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
  Conversely, ignoring that your employees purchase on their own a tool which helps them with their job is a pretty poor policy. One might even think someone who doesn't ignore such a situation and instead says, "Hey, I'll reimburse you for that!" is being kind.
  - tssva 4y ago
    Why purchase a tool for the benefit of your job which your employer will not pay for? If I am less efficient at my job because they won't purchase it, then that is their decision. Less efficient it is.
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
      > Why purchase a tool for the benefit of your job which your employer will not pay for? This is shifting the goalposts. Your initial comment assumed[0] that the employer had an expectation that the employee would pay for these things and I was intending to provide an alternate perspective. You can make your own decisions but it doesn't make sense to act like other employees have no agency. To answer the question, some people have a hobby that is also their job. Purchasing the tool for the hobby means they can use it for the job and an employer is being kind when they notice this situation and choose to reimburse the employee for their purchase. The point is, there's more room for understanding that one likely doesn't have the full picture. It is worth checking assumptions from time to time. [0] > Expecting your employees to provide you monthly loans ...
- icelancer 4y ago
  What do you think is more likely? American software developers are put out by needing to buy up to $XXX/month in services which are reimbursed in their next paycheck, creating a short-term loan, OR The same developers are not at all cash flow sensitive to $XXX/month and rather enjoy the credit card rewards they get to harvest from these reimbursements? If you work at a large corporation who forces the use of company cards over personal cards + timely reimbursements, the opinion is one-sided for the rewards alone. Much less the bureaucracy that usually accompanies the approval of using a company card. This is especially true when it comes to airline travel. Individuals far, far more prefer to book travel on their own rewards cards - often travel-based ones, netting significant benefits like Delta's AMEX MQD waiver. By the way, if it really matters to you, we will put Copilot and/or any other expenses on our own company rewards card if the cashflow is actually impactful. As I am sure most businesses would. It's just that employees vastly prefer the reimbursement methods for obvious reasons in today's rewards credit card environment.
  - number6 4y ago
    Employer gives them a credit card they can use for their software tooling
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    The only time I got a corporate card, the company used a third option: a corporate AMEX that you had to pay off on your own + timely reimbursements + rule against plugging your own travel reward cards to collect miles and bonuses. From employee point of view, this setup had all the drawbacks of using your own card, with none of the benefits. Well, OK - it saved you a tiny bit of time when doing expense reports, by automatically pre-filling the expense sheet with transactions pulled from AMEX statement. So there's that. As for software licensing, that same company had a system through which you could request software, and appropriate costs would be deducted automatically from somewhere (e.g. team budget, or more likely, your paycheck). So again, a third option.
- Larrikin 4y ago
  Most people when given the option prefer to "take the loan" out for the company, since most employees will have rewards credit cards. You get the full cost you paid in your next pay check plus the bonus points on your card, that will be at a minimum 1 percent of the cost and possibly up to 5+ percent if you're lucky and your expense is in a good category.
pydry 4y ago
I suspect it's a fee for not feeding it your IP to be chewed out and spat out in some other company.
nindalf 4y ago
> Why is it ~twice as expensive as a per-user license? Because enterprises are willing to pay a lot more. It’s the same reason the pro version of GitHub is $4/user/month while the enterprise version is $21/user/month. It doesn’t cost $17 to maintain the SSO features that enterprises can’t do without. But GitHub charges that because they know enterprises will pay.
dgrin91 4y ago
It sounds like you have never worked in at a place like ${BIG_CORP}, which is totally fair. Let me break it down for you: > -Simple license management (what's simpler than reimbursing personal expenses?) Try doing that x100,000, every month. It gets annoying fast > -Organization-wide policy management (huh?) Only group X is allowed to use these features, and only group Y is allowed to use code licensed in that way, etc. > -Industry-leading privacy (no idea what this means, how is this better than personal Copilot per person) This sounds like mostly marketing BS, but likely still better than personal copilot. Have you read to copliot EULA? I haven't. I would guess they are using code you write to re-train their AI. You know who has read the EULA? Corporate lawyers. They don't want Github reading their internal code, so I'm sure the license for Enterprise does not involve sending data back to Github. -Corporate proxy support (what even is this) If you work at any large company (not even a super big FAANG or something) you will have this. You don't want random employees being able to access any random site. E.g. in general devs should not be able to access their personal drop box account because its an easy way to steal data without the company knowing. So all their network will be behind a proxy and everything has to be whitelisted. This proxy support is basically integrating with that system.
- icelancer 4y ago
  I worked for a billion dollar company prior to running my own. >> Try doing that x100,000, every month. It gets annoying fast We didn't. Accounting did. Our company had a reimbursements-only policy, no corp cards. It was great, especially those of us who flew a lot and banked tons of airline, hotel, and credit card points. The other stuff, sure. Doubling the price? I don't buy it. Are large corps really stopping people from buying Copilot on their own and using the personal license, BTW? Definitely not.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    > Are large corps really stopping people from buying Copilot on their own and using the personal license, BTW? Definitely not. I would imagine so, just because of the EULA difference. Personally I never used and wouldn't dare to use Copilot at work, specifically out of concern for leaking company IP. (EDIT: That, and exports control. Regulations governing what can be sold to who around the world are complex, and come with huge fines and prison sentences for non-compliance. Large corporations take this very seriously. For software devs this, in practice, means that someone will be going over the dependency trees of your projects with a fine-tooth comb. I'm sure exports control people will be interested in your use of Copilot, though what they'd think of it I am not sure.) My experiences with personal licenses in two different corporate environments so far were: - A large multinational - they had an internal "app store" through which you could request specific software products. Licensing issues were handled behind the scenes and invisible to the user. If the software required a one-time payment or a paid subscription, you were informed how much money will be charged to what cost centre, and how often (in less corporate language: how much $ will be deducted from your salary, and when). I never tried to run software on personal licenses while there, but if I did, I imagine it would've been flagged by the same auditing system that occasionally pestered me about old JRE versions that need to be uninstalled. - A mid-sized manufacturer with highly corporate culture - they had IT install software to do automated auditing, and flagged any unauthorized software being run. They made a huge stink about people using unlicensed IrfanView. I actually bought an IrfanView license for my work machine using my own money, just so I could keep telling IT to tell whoever was driving those audits to leave me alone, as the license explicitly allowed using the software in commercial / corporate contexts. They weren't happy, but they also didn't tell me to remove it, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ - but had I asked, they'd just say "no".
Andaith 4y ago
IANAL but my understanding of the licenses is that the difference between the personal and business license is that the personal license allows them to use any files you open in your IDE as training data, but the business license doesn't.

tssva 4y ago

Expecting your employees to provide you monthly loans to cover recurring expenses is a pretty poor policy.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
Conversely, ignoring that your employees purchase on their own a tool which helps them with their job is a pretty poor policy. One might even think someone who doesn't ignore such a situation and instead says, "Hey, I'll reimburse you for that!" is being kind.
- tssva 4y ago
  Why purchase a tool for the benefit of your job which your employer will not pay for? If I am less efficient at my job because they won't purchase it, then that is their decision. Less efficient it is.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
    > Why purchase a tool for the benefit of your job which your employer will not pay for? This is shifting the goalposts. Your initial comment assumed[0] that the employer had an expectation that the employee would pay for these things and I was intending to provide an alternate perspective. You can make your own decisions but it doesn't make sense to act like other employees have no agency. To answer the question, some people have a hobby that is also their job. Purchasing the tool for the hobby means they can use it for the job and an employer is being kind when they notice this situation and choose to reimburse the employee for their purchase. The point is, there's more room for understanding that one likely doesn't have the full picture. It is worth checking assumptions from time to time. [0] > Expecting your employees to provide you monthly loans ...
icelancer 4y ago
What do you think is more likely? American software developers are put out by needing to buy up to $XXX/month in services which are reimbursed in their next paycheck, creating a short-term loan, OR The same developers are not at all cash flow sensitive to $XXX/month and rather enjoy the credit card rewards they get to harvest from these reimbursements? If you work at a large corporation who forces the use of company cards over personal cards + timely reimbursements, the opinion is one-sided for the rewards alone. Much less the bureaucracy that usually accompanies the approval of using a company card. This is especially true when it comes to airline travel. Individuals far, far more prefer to book travel on their own rewards cards - often travel-based ones, netting significant benefits like Delta's AMEX MQD waiver. By the way, if it really matters to you, we will put Copilot and/or any other expenses on our own company rewards card if the cashflow is actually impactful. As I am sure most businesses would. It's just that employees vastly prefer the reimbursement methods for obvious reasons in today's rewards credit card environment.
- number6 4y ago
  Employer gives them a credit card they can use for their software tooling
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  The only time I got a corporate card, the company used a third option: a corporate AMEX that you had to pay off on your own + timely reimbursements + rule against plugging your own travel reward cards to collect miles and bonuses. From employee point of view, this setup had all the drawbacks of using your own card, with none of the benefits. Well, OK - it saved you a tiny bit of time when doing expense reports, by automatically pre-filling the expense sheet with transactions pulled from AMEX statement. So there's that. As for software licensing, that same company had a system through which you could request software, and appropriate costs would be deducted automatically from somewhere (e.g. team budget, or more likely, your paycheck). So again, a third option.
Larrikin 4y ago
Most people when given the option prefer to "take the loan" out for the company, since most employees will have rewards credit cards. You get the full cost you paid in your next pay check plus the bonus points on your card, that will be at a minimum 1 percent of the cost and possibly up to 5+ percent if you're lucky and your expense is in a good category.

pydry 4y ago

I suspect it's a fee for not feeding it your IP to be chewed out and spat out in some other company.

nindalf 4y ago

> Why is it ~twice as expensive as a per-user license? Because enterprises are willing to pay a lot more. It’s the same reason the pro version of GitHub is $4/user/month while the enterprise version is $21/user/month. It doesn’t cost $17 to maintain the SSO features that enterprises can’t do without. But GitHub charges that because they know enterprises will pay.

dgrin91 4y ago

It sounds like you have never worked in at a place like ${BIG_CORP}, which is totally fair. Let me break it down for you: > -Simple license management (what's simpler than reimbursing personal expenses?) Try doing that x100,000, every month. It gets annoying fast > -Organization-wide policy management (huh?) Only group X is allowed to use these features, and only group Y is allowed to use code licensed in that way, etc. > -Industry-leading privacy (no idea what this means, how is this better than personal Copilot per person) This sounds like mostly marketing BS, but likely still better than personal copilot. Have you read to copliot EULA? I haven't. I would guess they are using code you write to re-train their AI. You know who has read the EULA? Corporate lawyers. They don't want Github reading their internal code, so I'm sure the license for Enterprise does not involve sending data back to Github. -Corporate proxy support (what even is this) If you work at any large company (not even a super big FAANG or something) you will have this. You don't want random employees being able to access any random site. E.g. in general devs should not be able to access their personal drop box account because its an easy way to steal data without the company knowing. So all their network will be behind a proxy and everything has to be whitelisted. This proxy support is basically integrating with that system.

icelancer 4y ago
I worked for a billion dollar company prior to running my own. >> Try doing that x100,000, every month. It gets annoying fast We didn't. Accounting did. Our company had a reimbursements-only policy, no corp cards. It was great, especially those of us who flew a lot and banked tons of airline, hotel, and credit card points. The other stuff, sure. Doubling the price? I don't buy it. Are large corps really stopping people from buying Copilot on their own and using the personal license, BTW? Definitely not.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  > Are large corps really stopping people from buying Copilot on their own and using the personal license, BTW? Definitely not. I would imagine so, just because of the EULA difference. Personally I never used and wouldn't dare to use Copilot at work, specifically out of concern for leaking company IP. (EDIT: That, and exports control. Regulations governing what can be sold to who around the world are complex, and come with huge fines and prison sentences for non-compliance. Large corporations take this very seriously. For software devs this, in practice, means that someone will be going over the dependency trees of your projects with a fine-tooth comb. I'm sure exports control people will be interested in your use of Copilot, though what they'd think of it I am not sure.) My experiences with personal licenses in two different corporate environments so far were: - A large multinational - they had an internal "app store" through which you could request specific software products. Licensing issues were handled behind the scenes and invisible to the user. If the software required a one-time payment or a paid subscription, you were informed how much money will be charged to what cost centre, and how often (in less corporate language: how much $ will be deducted from your salary, and when). I never tried to run software on personal licenses while there, but if I did, I imagine it would've been flagged by the same auditing system that occasionally pestered me about old JRE versions that need to be uninstalled. - A mid-sized manufacturer with highly corporate culture - they had IT install software to do automated auditing, and flagged any unauthorized software being run. They made a huge stink about people using unlicensed IrfanView. I actually bought an IrfanView license for my work machine using my own money, just so I could keep telling IT to tell whoever was driving those audits to leave me alone, as the license explicitly allowed using the software in commercial / corporate contexts. They weren't happy, but they also didn't tell me to remove it, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ - but had I asked, they'd just say "no".

Andaith 4y ago

IANAL but my understanding of the licenses is that the difference between the personal and business license is that the personal license allows them to use any files you open in your IDE as training data, but the business license doesn't.