Universities are a special case. They generally don’t spend money because of the red tape.
In much of corporate America expenses under $100 give or take don’t even require documentation, so a $50/month support subscription is easily purchased.
Just need to find the person with the purchase card.
In my experience, having MIT and UCI as customers, US universities are much easier to deal with small to no process for simple cheap things. On the other hand, I was contacted by a well known engineering school in France (ENSEEIHT), they wanted support but were laughing at the idea to spend 20$ per month for the privilege, left the impression they wanted to use my time for way under minimum wage, same yesterday with a deutch school who wanted help but not willing to spend a dime, and some other universities who have deployed my software in prod but did not upgrade in the last 5 years. Even in China, I stumbled upon a fork maintained by the university of Shangai, of course they never reached out in the first place to ask for any kind of support, just took the code and went their own way. This kind of behavior haven't happen with US universities which are more likely to reach out and pay for support
> I stumbled upon a fork maintained by the university of Shangai, of course they never reached out in the first place to ask for any kind of support, just took the code and went their own way.
It is very hard to find a person with that purchase card.
As a developer in corporate environment I won't get anywhere close to be able to influence anyone to buy a support, or a subscription for an open source or closed source product. This is my third corp, and it was true in all of them.
The most what I got is the approval to do some PRs for such projects during company time.
