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Tell HN: Copilot For Business forcibly terminates Copilot Personal subscriptions
My org recently enabled Copilot For Business.
I've had a personal subscription until this point.
Today, my Copilot plugin started throwing rate-limit errors. Upon checking my billing details, I notice I can no longer manage my subscription and that it's managed by my Org.
GitHub Support told me that my personal subscription was cancelled, with a pro-rated refund, because it's not possible to have both a personal and org subscription.
Now I have to wait for someone from the org to manually revoke my seat so I can re-purchase my own subscription.
Heads up for anyone else who finds themselves in this situation.
- thrwwycbr 2y agoWhy are you using your personal account for work? _always_ and I mean _always_ have a separate github/gitlab account for work and private things, otherwise you risk getting a lawsuit of your (former) employers. Especially if your work contract assigns all intellectual property rights to the employer.
- skyzyx 2y agoI disagree with most of these posters. I am a person on GitHub. I don’t become a different person once the work day starts. I’ve done plenty of OSS as an employee of companies, and I’ve done more OSS work as an individual. Although you _can_ use separate accounts, the idea that you MUST is nonsense. But yes, I encountered the same thing once I was added to my full-time employer’s GHE Cloud account. So far, not a problem.
- rahkiin 2y agoWhy do you want a personal subscription instead of an org subscription? Isn’t it great the org pays and all input is not collected for the big AI? Also, did you use the same github account for your personal projects as you did for job purposes?
- oalders 2y agoAn org can impose restrictions on CoPilot which then affect your personal account. See https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/managing-copilot/managing-copilot-as-an-individual-subscriber/managing-copilot-policies-as-an-individual-subscriber#enabling-or-disabling-suggestions-matching-public-code https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/managing-copilot/managing... In my case I just created a new account to use with the org, so that I can control the settings on my personal account.
- gavinray 2y agoThis is the reason.
- mkreis 2y agoWhy would you prefer your own personal subscription over a business plan? I just checked the offering today and was confused why the personal subscription is with $10 almost half of the business plan with $19. After some more browsing I found a page which claimed that a business plan had better privacy protection (e.g. your input is not used for training). So the business plan seems to be a tad better.
- oalders 2y agoSome people qualify for a free personal subscription.
- snotrockets 2y agoSome qualifications are based on GitHub contributions. If those are tired to the same account you use for work, you're out of luck. GitHub encouraging and enabling using the same account for work (-for-hire) and personal (or work, but owned by yourself) might've been great for growth, but it's a risk managment minefield.
- marcosdumay 2y agoBecause they want to use it for other stuff than their job?
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoThen do it on your personal account?
- drivingmenuts 2y agoApparently, they can't. Ive done the same sort of thing with software licenses - occasionally, something is so useful that I'm willing to maintain my own subscription. The full Jetbrains suite, for one. I seem to recall Apple doing roughly the same thing with email accounts.
- yumraj 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Spooky23 2y agoLesson: Don’t conduct personal business with employer email.
- cut3 2y agoWhy wouldnt you have an account using that jobs credentials that is only for that work, and another for your personal stuff? Mixing that stuff is not good practice for many reasons.
- brycelarkin 2y agoSeparate Github profiles for work and personal.
- solardev 2y agoIs it normal for people to have separate profiles like that on Github?
- OutOfHere 2y agoYes, of course. In fact it is a pretty bad idea to use the same profile for an employer. Always treat an employer as disposable, along with the respective GitHub username for it.
- amerkhalid 2y agoI would say most devs use same GitHub profile for work and personal projects. GitHub provides pretty easy way to join various organizations with same handle. It almost seems exception when a developer creates a new profile for work.
- OutOfHere 2y agoThe practice can vary significantly by the employer. Some employers prefer the usernames be new and unique to the employer, whereas others don't care. It's obvious that it's a major liability for the employee to reuse the username for personal and professional organizations.
- solardev 2y agoYeah, exactly. Personally I always thought that was a better policy (to have separate profiles) but I've actually had senior devs in the org tell me to just use my personal one and add my work email to it, so that's what I did. Seemed strange to me but I didn't question it too much. Maybe I should've, lol.
- 2y ago
- irvingprime 2y agoThat is truly awful customer service.
- al_borland 2y agoI don’t think I’d ever sign up for personal stuff with my work email. Those are two areas of my life I keep separate. If you want a personal account and are willing to pay for it, sign up under a non-work account. Use that at home, and use your work account at work. This makes sense to me.
- Mandatum 2y agoIt's called domain claiming. Your org should have notified you, or asked that you migrated the email to your personal one.