If I'm reading it wrong, let me know.
I mean, pay this invoice ... or else what?
Or else they send it to collections.
There's nothing about this "for open source". This is for the celebrities of the open source world. "Use our product and let us advertise that you're using it." Nice try, but this is a pretty common marketing strategy, so no point pretending it's about supporting open source. A big name open source project adopting their products provides massive value to the company. Actual support would be giving access to the non-celebrities of the open source world.
I think it’s reasonable to grant humans agency. If they don’t want it they don’t have to take it. It’s pretty obviously a huge net positive.
In comparison, a program that grants time-limited credits to a few high-visibility projects reads like a self-serving marketing move no matter how you slice it.
I mean, suppose Adobe decides to gift "$1200" value in Adobe products/subscriptions to all subscribers of the gimp-users mailing list. Can I criticize that?
I just think it’s a waste of emotional energy to get worked up about what’s very obviously a net positive.
And I did not say gifts should never be criticized; “here have this free crack cocaine” would obviously be immoral. Don’t do the HN overgeneralization thing.
For me, if I was going to plan to cancel something in the future, then instead of scheduling it, I'd just do it now before the thought goes out of my head.
Your suggestion of "we'll evaluate" individually would be a very costly undertaking for Anthropic. Not reasonable. If your suggestion was for Anthropic to evaluate at the end of the 6 months whether to continue the free plan generally, I don't see anything that prevents them from doing so.
I think Anthropic should probably give some notice in the CLI or Claude.ai in the final month of the offer. Not doing that would be a bit ugly.
Would it? The only way to access Claude is via a CLI or a GUI.
> $ claude --resume
> No subscription active (expired on 6/1/2026). Reactivate at claude.ai/settings.
No. "Sorry, subscription has expired, please re-up your account" is an extremely reasonable UX.
The whole "free period but we'll auto bill you after" is a shitty dark pattern that mostly exists to extract value from life admin errors. The people who got enough value to justify the cost would've paid anyway.
What is ugly here is the combination of the free trial (not ugly in an of itself), and they way they are trying to recruit qualified users for it from open source.
I have had subscriptions renewed unwillingly and it was always clear to me that, as much as I disliked this practice, the expense was always my fault.
Instead of potentially getting billed for some trial I forgot about, I would rather pay for a month, immediately cancel, and then repeat every month when I realize it's not working.
Besides helping me keep my expenses under control, it doubles as an evaluation of the company. If they make it difficult to cancel, or do not let me use the rest of my paid time, I know they are not a company I want to do business with.
OSS maintainer: I'd like to cancel my subscription!
Claude: Thank you for prolonging your subscription for another year. I'll take the required steps.
OSS maintainer: No, I said CANCEL!
Claude: You are absolutely right! Thank you for your two year subscription.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.
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.
It may or may not be worth playing their game depending on whether you use the product or not, but there are opportunities for people who do play.