# Julia's growth is making free JuliaBox unsustainable
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441
**Category:** Community
**Tags:** juliabox
**Created:** [January 9, 2019, 6:06pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441 "2019-01-09T18:06:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@kolia](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kolia)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2019, 2:02pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/61 "2019-04-01T14:02:05Z")
My local uni is deploying a JupyterHub instance for use by students, which has not been made public but which I have access to. They have installed a few julia kernels for different julia versions, and it all works nicely.
The only hickups for users are due to the fact that JupyterHub is based on JupyterLab: packages like `Interact.jl` that haven’t yet caught up with the switch from jupyter notebook to jupyterlab.
It did take the cluster admins some work to figure out that they need to be careful about not leaking global/central `JULIA_DEPOT` paths into the depot paths of user sessions, so that when users add packages those get installed in folders they are privy to. It was mostly smooth sailing after that from what I can tell.
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### Author:  [@davidanthoff](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/davidanthoff)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2019, 2:13pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/62 "2019-04-01T14:13:02Z")
See also [here](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ann-mybinder-org-support-for-julia-1-x-and-project-toml/22522/9) for the julia specific announcement for [mybinder.org](https://mybinder.org/).
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### Author:  [@xiaodai](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/xiaodai)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2019, 11:20pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/63 "2019-04-01T23:20:27Z")
> [@viralbshah](#):
>
> many others are offering a hosted Julia service:
Don’t forget
> **[The notebook for reproducible research — Nextjournal](https://nextjournal.com/)**
>
> Runs anything you can put into a Docker container. Improve your workflow with polyglot notebooks, automatic versioning and real-time collaboration. Save time and money with on-demand provisioning, including GPU support. Use it for ML, data science,...
which is my favourite so far. It can persist the image, so you can pacakgeCompile afew packages and save them. I have requested a $10 a month tier that is more aligned with the silver in Juliabox.
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### Author:  [@viralbshah](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/viralbshah)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2019, 2:32pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/64 "2019-04-02T14:32:43Z")
We should probably note all these on [julialang.org](http://julialang.org).
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### Author:  [@xiaodai](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/xiaodai)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2019, 2:41am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/65 "2019-04-17T02:41:33Z")
> [@chakravala](#):
>
> CoCalc provides a Julia environment you can use online [https://cocalc.com/doc/software-julia.html](https://cocalc.com/doc/software-julia.html)
Did anyone read this [blog post](http://blog.sagemath.com/2019/04/12/should-i-resign-from-my-full-professor-job-to-work-fulltime-on-cocalc.html) about the struggle of open source within academcy and CoCalc? Makes me want to support Cocalc. I had a spin of their Julia notebook and it has DataFrames and Plots pre-installed. It’s a bit slow but it’s the unpaid tier.
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### Author:  [@Zach\_Christensen](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Zach_Christensen)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2019, 5:46am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/66 "2019-04-17T05:46:27Z")
I saw it pop up on slack. Since this conversation originally started I’ve discovered a lot of different ways to make code interactive online. It seems like an increasingly saturated market. I wonder how important it will be to have JuliaBox as these services continue to grow.
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### Author:  [@xiaodai](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/xiaodai)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2019, 6:28am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/67 "2019-04-17T06:28:00Z")
Very. Like the simplicity and Julia focus of juliabox.
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### Author:  [@sdanisch](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/sdanisch)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2019, 3:02pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/68 "2019-04-17T15:02:12Z")
Btw, [Nextjournal](https://nextjournal.com/) also has a strong focus on Julia 😉
I’m basically full time employed to improve Julia’s usability at Nextjournal 🙂
If you find anything Julia related that works sub optimal, let me know!
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### Author:  [@ChrisRackauckas](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ChrisRackauckas)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2019, 3:33pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/69 "2019-04-17T15:33:46Z")
> [@sdanisch](#):
>
> Btw, [Nextjournal](https://nextjournal.com/) also has a strong focus on Julia 😉
> I’m basically full time employed to improve Julia’s usability at Nextjournal 🙂
> If you find anything Julia related that works sub optimal, let me know!
I think Makie.jl (sure, on NextJournal) needs more work. Please spend 90% of time on Makie. Thanks 😉
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### Author:  [@mkborregaard](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mkborregaard)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2019, 3:58pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/70 "2019-04-17T15:58:40Z")
I’m personally very happy with how Simon allocates his time 🙂
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### Author:  [@ChrisRackauckas](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ChrisRackauckas)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2019, 4:35pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/71 "2019-04-17T16:35:01Z")
> [@mkborregaard](#):
>
> I’m personally very happy with how Simon allocates his time 🙂
I am greedy and think Makie is the best thing ever and want more of it 😄
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### Author:  [@xiaodai](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/xiaodai)
#### Post date: [April 17, 2019, 9:41pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/72 "2019-04-17T21:41:17Z")
> [@sdanisch](#):
>
> you find anything Julia related that works sub optimal, let me know!
Would be nice to have more images eg with key data science package pre compiled! I am trying to make some
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### Author:  [@bionicinnovations](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/bionicinnovations)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2019, 11:52pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/73 "2019-12-03T23:52:57Z")
I appreciate the need to keep JuliaBox financially viable. However, for academics trying to introduce Julia to students, the current subscription model will mean that we will have to remove our coding courses that rely on JuliaBox, and this means that lots of students will forgo an introduction to Julia.
What about providing 100 hrs free per year, then some kind of pay-as-you-go option thereafter, e.g. $7 for an additional 100 hrs.
This subscription model would not preclude those of us who do not receive financial support to run our courses and continue to introduce students to Julia.
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### Author:  [@anon92994695](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/anon92994695)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2019, 12:25am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/74 "2019-12-04T00:25:24Z")
I don’t even know what JuliaBox is, is it possible to “donate” to you core dev’s at Julia? Or is it preferred that people just buy some licenses?
Server costs are some serious stuff.
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### Author:  [@anon92994695](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/anon92994695)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2019, 12:32am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/75 "2019-12-04T00:32:40Z")
How many students do you have in a classroom using JuliaBox? I’m just curious.
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### Author:  [@bionicinnovations](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/bionicinnovations)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2019, 1:17am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/76 "2019-12-04T01:17:55Z")
We had 15 student in the cohort this year, but it depends on enrolments. We were considering implementing the workshop in another course which typically gets about 50 students, but that is up in the air at the moment.
The issue isn’t really for these students, because they could sign up for a 30 day free trial of JuliaBox for the workshop. The issue is for the academics (me and my colleagues) who requires the use of JuliaBox to maintain the course and update it, typically for only 2 weeks prior to the workshop. We also might introduce the odd research student to JuliaBox before they eventually download a local version of Julia, which typically might be the odd login sporadically 3-5 times throughout the year. We are not heavy users of JuliaBox, I think 100 free hrs per year of use would enable us to continue introducing students to coding in Julia.
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### Author:  [@anon92994695](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/anon92994695)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2019, 1:31am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/77 "2019-12-04T01:31:20Z")
Raises another question: Is it possible to give JuliaBox, or otherwise, subscriptions to people as gifts? 🙂
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### Author:  [@davidanthoff](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/davidanthoff)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2019, 2:21am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/78 "2019-12-04T02:21:01Z")
Do take a look at [mybinder.org](http://mybinder.org). It supports Julia and is free.
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### Author:  [@carstenbauer](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/carstenbauer)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2019, 8:17am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/79 "2019-12-04T08:17:33Z")
Have you used it for any serious teaching though? It feels more like a try out option to me.
Also the state of students individual notebooks is not preserve, afaiu.
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### Author:  [@mauro3](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mauro3)
#### Post date: [December 4, 2019, 8:35am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julias-growth-is-making-free-juliabox-unsustainable/19441/80 "2019-12-04T08:35:40Z")
I just tried [mybinder.org](http://mybinder.org) in a class (of 15 students) and it was not that great. There is no way to save progress and come back later; even after the 15min break some student’s sessions were timed out and they had to start from scratch. For their homework, I recommended to them to use [nextjournal.com](http://nextjournal.com), which does allow to save progress and is free as well (payed for more stuff though). However, for next year, I’ll try to get a university JupyterHub installation setup.
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