Not just for students, but also OSS developers (who Github said they would give Copilot for free). I know this because I am an open-source developer, and over the weekend my Copilot was degraded to the point that it's virtually useless. (It was pretty annoying because I was doing Ludum Dare this weekend, and making extensive use of Copilot until it suddenly stopped working.)
The dumbest part about this whole thing is I would happily pay $10/month for Copilot if given the option. However, GitHub won't even let me switch to a paid plan! The setting in the admin panel simply says that it's already paid for and won't allow me to switch.
This should be renamed to Copilot's free tier as it impacts more than just students.
This is also temporary based on a maintenance window and should return to normal on Monday.
Putting aside this sudden change for a moment...
I can't be the only one that is concerned by the title of this post?
Why is copilot being used by students? That seems... like that should be against every school's policy?
I am fine with this. I personally have no interest in Copilot, but my understanding is its not small feat to offer a service like this. I think it would be understandable if the "free tier" was severely rate limited. GitHub has plenty of crappy business practices, this seems pretty tame. The honeymoon is over. If people want this technology, they can pay up.
Not sure if this is still the case, but last time I checked Microsoft Office had student discount, but was not generally free. This seems like a similar situation.
OP here
Free alternatives to try: Codeium, Tabnine (trial), Replit (trial)
Another super long discussion of students having issues: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/43634
[edit] I'm aware this is just a maintenance window, but still a >1 week severe degradation to the point of unusable without any warning whatsoever isn't a great reflection on how Github Copilot views their free tier users.
It's my understanding that open source software does not have equal access to code pilot for free. Isn't the quote free access contingent on the repository popularity?
GPT-3 API is also getting flaky. I guess Microsoft datacenters are getting steamrolled by the ChatGPT traffic.
One reply in the thread provides their GitHub support case reply. Relevant quote:
> This week, we've had to take down some of our Copilot resources for maintenance. While we did our best to source extra capacity elsewhere, we've been forced to limit some free users for the period of time where one of our busiest models is out of commission. We expect that this will cease to impact your use of Copilot after the 16th.