Yes, Overleaf is both free-as-in-beer [0] and free-as-in-speech [1]. The OSS version is pretty easy to self-host, but it's missing quite a few features from the paid version. I still prefer compiling from the command-line for most of my documents, but I run the self-hosted version for collaboration.
That sounds like a sign that overleaf is struggling, that they had to make that change.
And Typst is more generous there, you can collaborate 3 people with no problem.
Yup. You used to be able to share projects with unlimited people via link sharing, but they annoyingly got rid of that last year [0]. And Overleaf's cheapest plan is still more expensive than a basic VPS, so it's actually cheaper to self-host (which is what I'm doing [1]).
> That sounds like a sign that overleaf is struggling, that they had to make that change.
Either struggling or realized that they have a captive audience—if your professor requires assignments to be typeset with LaTeX and assigns group projects, there aren't really any other options.
[0] https://www.overleaf.com/blog/changes-to-project-sharing
Some people can't grasp that Overleaf may be a really good product that has to compete with hundreds of both free and fully open source alternatives.
> “Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Sometimes beer happens to be free, in which case it is referred to as "free beer". It's just an example.