Shared Team Account for Solo Developers / Entrepreneurs / Indy Hackers / Individuals

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44

Absolutely, the scale is very important, but also the frequency of transfers, if you’re receiving money on specific regular interval’s it counts towards being for business.

Yeppers :+1:
Although in this case I would just ask the travel agent to split the bill into separate pieces, and have each friend pay their own share.

If we where planning to do this again, I could go to the bank and have them set up an account for our “non-profit travel organisation” and file for tax exemption status (which is also governed by different rules than in the US)

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45

The one thing I think we can all agree on is tax law is dumb and needlessly complicated—no matter where you live.

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46

Absolutely! :heart:

I started to research this years ago when me and a group of online friends wanted to split the ~40$ bill for renting a server.

I ended up just paying for everything myself :sweat_smile:

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47

Here is what I attempted to post back to you:

Well done. Good for you. Send me a link!

Sadly, the system here will not accept that post.

“An error occurred: Body seems unclear, is it a complete sentence?”

It wishes for me to write a little story for you, so here it is. One wonders how a sentence fragment reply in a forum constitutes an ‘error’ disabling a reply. By the way, the current grammar checker for Office 365 is perfectly fine with the allegedly erroneous text.
The person who put in place the code that disables the ability to sensibly reply has created an annoying and pointless misfeature.

48

FYI

I closed the related topic a few days ago but am not closing this topic at present so that if/when OpenAI responds to your request you can update this topic.

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49

@cass - Reselling, by definition, involves marketing a product to earn profit.

Imagine someone in a business, or local community group, or special interest group (eg- electronics club) – offers to gather together to be able to qualify for something; perhaps a Costco membership.

This is not reselling; primarily because it’s not being marketed. It’s being shared among a group of like-minded people to determine those interested in participating. Moreso – it involves no markup or profit.

Cooperative Buying or Group Buying without markup, or without buying an item to resell, is a legally acknowledged definition that is not “reselling”. This does not break the OpenAI ToS.

If you still have concerns, I’ll be happy to buy two annual “Team” accounts and split with you (or anyone else interested).

50

Erhm, that is actually reselling, I personally know someone who was busted for that :sweat_smile:

It’s entirely possible to get a Costco membership for a club or community, but you’ll have to register that as a legal entity first.

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In science there is a well-known saying about laymen who misrepresent evidence. It is … the plural of anecdote is not data.

The most common reason “group buys” are cited for violation of ToS are abuse which have no relation to cooperative buying; rather, they are about multiple people sharing single purchases, etc. A simple example is the “Netflix Family” abuse outside of the ToS intention. OpenAI has a similar concern in mind if you read their ToS.

In addition – there is a great deal of nuance surrounding the difference between cooperative buying and reselling.

Furthermore, this is not a legal violation, it’s a discussion of abiding by ToS, which would only be brought to attention if it formed the basis for abuse.

Finally … one of my degrees is in law. Although I didn’t get a JD, I am immersed in the field and I’m happy to dive into the specific details/caselaw with you in a separate post, if you’re interested.

As I stated – I’ll bear any concerns, myself.

I’ll buy the “Teams” account and @cass (or anyone else interested) can join as the second user. It only requires two licenses.

If anyone is interested, I’m happy to facilitate.

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Yes, I’m afraid you’re the layman here, but hear me out :sweat_smile:
(and let’s stop the name-calling here shall we?)

You may not have thought about it, but you made quite a few assumptions about me here; do you know my educational background? Do you know which country I’m from?

If you want to apply the scientific method you’ll need to question these assumptions, as well as your original thesis:

If there’s evidence that suggests otherwise, then these should be examined further, not discredited.

But let’s zoom out a bit, because this is a great example of the difference between modern science and the philosophy practiced by the ancient Greeks, usually know as naturalism.

Modern science as we know it build on a foundation of falsifiability, as in you make a statement “all swans are white” and then attempt to find a single black swan to falsify your original statement.

In your case you specifically went ahead to find evidence that supports your intentions, this is what’s know as confirmation bias and has nothing to do with science.

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53

It appears I’ve struck a nerve and you’ve inferred subtext that wasn’t intended.

I’m sorry if you believe I’ve made assumptions about you; that was not my intention. I posted in general terms. I have zero interest in engaging you, nor have I made any claim as to your background or insult to you.

If you’ve taken something I’ve said as an insult or implication about your background, I apologize if you were left with that impression.

I have no interest in your background, never commented about your background and have no interest in the argument.

And while you explicitly “called names” while casting yourself as the arbiter and myself as a layman, I did no such thing. Making the well-known, generalized statement that anecdotes are not data or policy is neither name calling nor somehow an attack against you. It’s an attack against anecdotes. Nothing more.

If you’d like to discuss the ToS, by all means, start a thread, post the relevant provisions and debate the specific wording and caselaw.

Moving on…

There is no explicit violation and there certainly isn’t any abuse by a few like-minded people coming together to use GPT Teams among them.

If a person intends to share their single account with others, that would be a violation (re: Netflix analog). If you attempt to resell access to your account, that would also be a violation.

That’s not what’s being discussed here…

For those interested in GPT Teams service, I’m happy to buy with a small group of solo developers like myself, to meet the minimum of 2-seat license for Teams.

…And for anyone that wants to argue their interpretation of the OpenAI ToS as they relate to Teams, that sounds like a great topic for a separate post; this thread is about people who want to share a Team subscription.

Thanks!

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Yes let me highlight it for you:

:arrow_up:This is the moment where:

And tbh, you seem to have missed the entire point about falsifiability, as your attack against anecdotes are invalid in this instance.

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In science there is a well-known saying about laymen who misrepresent evidence

Right, it’s a well-known saying – at no point did I attribute it to you. My point was against anecdotes as evidence.

Nothing was missed on falsifiability; it’s well-known from grade-school as the basis for forming evidence.

Whatever caused you to think I’m interested in arguing with you, please understand that it was a misunderstanding - I am not.

I am very clearly attempting to discuss the topic of the post – like-minded people who responsibly would like to use GPT Teams together.

I understand that’s not your interest; however, please find another way to express yourself without involving me. Thanks!

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I’ll let the other moderators be the judge of that as you have no interest in listening to me.

This topic will be unlisted in the meantime.

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For others who are interested in a cooperative buy, @elmstedt has written me to notify me that OpenAI has told him they don’t allow cooperative buys in GPT Team.

I’ll let @elmstedt chime-in to share the internal source and wording of why this presents a problem for OpenAI.

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It is very reasonable to repeatedly point out and stress that sharing a Team account with people one cannot trust can be an issue:

While I appreciate the open discussion it’s necessary because of the associated risks. And this forum cannot be the place to promote risky actions when using OpenAI services.

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@vb - please don’t confuse the topic of misuse/abuse/hacking and cooperative buying.

The quote you provided has no parity with the cooperative buy that was the subject of this thread, originally posted by @cass

I want to be clear that solo developers were discussing a collaboration between like-minded individuals that intended to respect the Terms of Service for OpenAI and never for one moment suggested doing anything resembling the issues presented in that quote.

It would be irresponsible and completely misleading to associate developers attempting to work together and pay OpenAI for their access, with the type of unethical behavior in that quote.

For your reference – this is that author’s added clarification of the situation:

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There is no cooperative buying if the bill will ultimately be paid by one person with the role of the Owner.
The owner will then receive payments or not from other team members.

Someone can add me to their team account but how can they know that I will pay? How can they know that I won’t invite other team members and add to the bill of the owner?

There are risks involved in creating a Team account, especially when sharing it with strangers. There is no way around repeatedly pointing out that this is the case.

I don’t care about “reselling” or “cooperative buying” in the context of internationally differing laws. I care about creating awareness that this is a risky idea. The example I posted serves the purpose well.

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The example you posted is someone explicitly stating their account had been hacked. Worse, you left that part out of your quote, resulting in a much different impression of the full reality.

No one is arguing with you about risks; however, risks are not hacking and again, there is no parity there. It’s irresponsible (and arguing for argument’s sake) to suggest there is.

in the context of internationally differing laws.

Don’t mistake civil matters re:Terms of Service with “laws” or jurisdictional differences in laws. Terms of Service are an implicit agreement/contract, not a form of law – and no one has ever proposed breaking ToS, much less laws.

Furthermore, it’s irrelevant as @anon22939549 has indicated that he has spoken with OpenAI and they’ve told him this is not allowed. Once he confirms the full details of OpenAI’s position on this matter, it’s case-closed.

Thanks!

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It doesn’t matter if I add other Team members against the will of the Team owner with malicious intent or without knowing that I shouldn’t be doing this or while being hacked. The risks remain and this option should not be advertised here.

I am glad that @anon22939549 made this perfectly clear:

this is not allowed

I agree, let’s close the case and move on. There are more interesting topics about AI to discuss than the Terms of Service.