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Comment by gravypod | Hacker News Reader

I wish the Sublime Text people open sourced their code. I'd buy it from them in that event and I'd finally have a text editor to recommend. Atom, VS code, and anything else is completely blown out of the water by ST. There's a reason it's still around and it's because ST is the only thing that can even think of doing what sublime text can do.

Good work to the people behind it, it's an amazing feat no doubt. Just please consider making it free software for all of us who care about that just a bit. Amazing work none the less.

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People need to eat, pay the bills.....

I doubt donations would be even half of what his creator is getting now.

$70 dollars is already pretty ok, considering I was paying above 150 with student discount on the mid-90 for software tools.

Why this urge to get stuff for free, yet wanting to sell own work.

And yes, I do donnate to all FOSS projects relevant to my work, as if I had bought a license.

The demo is already unlimited. People wo want to free-load (or can't afford a license) can already now user it for free.

I know there are many people who will obey the license, but would not donate. If you dual license it (commerical and GPL), they'd just accept the GPL "deal". So it still makes sense to not have a GPL option business wise.

But what about, instead of open source, they make it "source open" or "source available"? Here is the source, you may not use it unless I die. Or you may use it, but not sell it. Or you must contribute changes back if you release a changed version...

They have no big trade secrets in the source. They already rely on the fact that customers obey licenses that they materially don't have to. So I believe they have nothing to lose by making the source available.

Other than having others packing the software and selling it as theirs.

The OP said they're happy to pay for it. Open source doesn't necessarily imply zero cost.

>Open source doesn't necessarily imply zero cost.

While it's true you can charge for your OSS product, all OSS licenses allow the recipient to distribute the source code (and the built binaries) at no cost. So, OSS does imply free, even if it doesn't mandate it.

The source code not compiled code.

actually:

>> Just please consider making it free software for all of us

> I wish the Sublime Text people open sourced their code. I'd _buy_ it from them in that event. (Emphasis is mine)

I took that to mean the OP wanted it to be "free as in freedom" not "free as in beer".

Free software doesn't imply gratuity (and neither does open source)

How many GNU/Linux users pay for their distributions?

I'd pay for a distribution if it was better then free (cost) software.

For instance, if Apple decided today "Hey why not just make OSX a set of applications, a window manager, and a desktop environment for Linux and make it free software." I'd pay for it. I'd pay the 100 bucks because no one really does UX better then Apple.

Interestingly, I would prefer that it were subscription-funded.

I would prefer to acknowledge on-going development costs and pay those for a continually-developed, high-quality editor.

Same here. My reaction to JetBrains doing that was dismay at first. But I've come to appreciate speed of updates, although the last update of IDEA completely broke the Vim Emulator for me, so I've switched back to ST.

I think he should at least put a demo time limit on using Sublime Unregistered. It's established enough now, and the extra revenue could help speed up development. There are a few things that Atom does in a nicer way, like package management.

But Atom doesn't feel nice because of the speed issues, for me.

Doesn't the developer basically abandon it for years at a time?

Looking back a few years at the dev log, it looks like it was one big update per year, then for 2016 we've seen an update every 2-3 months. So who knows anymore? I'm inclined to think these semi-rapid updates are to bring 3.0 out of beta, so I'm not so sure we should expect the same "speed" for too long.

I'm not talking about cost free, I'm talking about libre-free.

It would instantly be forked and have the payment nag removed within 24 hours of it being open sourced by someone who is not willing to pay for it but still wants that nag removed. And they wouldn't be the only person to use that fork.

I doubt it would be a very good move for the author.

Payment nagging isn't really acceptable for an application in general for free software. Just give the source distribution to anyone who pays for it and require copy-left changes.

> There's a reason it's still around and it's because ST is the only thing that can even think of doing what sublime text can do.

I'm pretty certain that both emacs & vim can do anything Sublime Text can do, but I'm open to being shown otherwise.

Have an easy to understand Graphical User Interface.

Keyboard commands aren't the reason I want Sublime Text. I want it for the amazing plugins that support a load of features as well as having a graphical user interface.

emacs has an easy to understand GUI (as an example, here's a screenshot of its gdb mode: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/images/gdb.png), and amazing plugins that support a load of features.

There's a reason people have spent so many years using it.

I use the Emacs GUI, but would not call it easy to understand because it differs so much from most modern GUIs (i.e., most GUIs designed after the Mac became the most popular platform for GUIs around 1987).

For example, if there is already a selection, right click in Emacs extends it much like pressing a shift-arrow key does in a typical GUI. (Most modern GUIs will of course pop up a contextual menu in that situation.)

Similar to the keyboard-driven part, as much as possible of the GUI part of Emacs is implemented in Lisp, so it seems to me (as someone who has modified his copy of Emacs to pop up a contextual menu on right click) that it would be fairly easy to write a GUI for Emacs that adheres much more closely to modern conventions than the GUI that comes with Emacs does, but the only project I know of that has tried to do so is the Aquamacs project.

its' pretty much free, but for the occasional alert

Free is not libre. I am willing to pay with money but I'm not willing to pay with security violations and my morals.

$70 doesn't seem free. Personally VS Code on Linux has been rock solid for me.

There is a paid version and a free version. I meant that the free version works fine, except you get an occasional alert.

There doesn't seem to be a free version at all. There is an evaluation version which is meant to tide you over until you decide to buy or abandon ST. It wouldn't be right to promote such an arrangement as a "free version".

The evaluation version is free and it works forever. If the developers were not OK with that, they would put a time limit on it. Since they haven't, that means they're OK with it.

It works on the honour system. Rigorous enforcement is more difficult and annoying than its worth.

If you continue to use the evaluation copy after you're done evaluating it, nobody's going to stop you, but it is a little dishonest.

If you use Sublime Text professionally and you get audited/noticed, not having a licence would be a big mistake. $70 is pittance for "enterprise" software, plus I wouldn't want to work with somebody who's effectively dishonest.

If you're an amateur (in the literal sense, not as an insult), then you might be more inclined to pirate it. I guess the developers are savvy enough to realise this, and just put a nag-screen in instead.

Bottom line, some people have the luxury of having such well-paid jobs that open source is a real possibility nowadays. But ST is likely someone's income/living, and shafting the devs isn't cool at all. If you're not happy with this, you can always make another editor, but it turns out to be fairly hard to do (see Atom).

I like to call it "free as in WinRAR".

There is not a free version. There's an evaluation version that doesn't lock out any features, but it's not provided to you for free -- you have to pay to continue using it. If you're just using it as your text editor for free you're abusing the honour system.

But does the license permit you to use the free version to do work? The issue isn't the alerts it's compliance with the spirit and letter of the shareware version.

"Sublime Text may be downloaded and evaluated for free, however a license must be purchased for continued use."

There is no separate shareware version. What makes Sublime unique is that it never stops working; it's evaluation period is open, and treats the user as an adult to do the right and legal thing.

Not really unique, it used to be very common. Remember winzip?

True - winrar and mirc also come to mind. In today's world of app store DRM at one end and open source options at the other, it's definitely a stand-out more than it would have been a few years ago.

But in this case it also works very well, I think. I know very few people willing to pay $70 for a text editor, but getting to try it out and verify that it's a really good text editor does change things somewhat.

I think plenty of us would pay for vim or emacs had history played out differently.

Reaper a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is $65 and is free to evaluate and doesn't hinder usage. All other DAWs are betweem $250-$500++. I use to use one that cost $1,000 I use Reaper and thrown my money at them.

I do get mad when people don't give them money since I really appreciate the model.

I don't want to get lost in semantics argument but "a free version that you're supposed to pay for if you continue to use it for extended periods" is exactly what I meant by shareware.

It's great that Sublime doesn't have strong DRM, but using the free version indefinitely is just as wrong as using a cracked version of Photoshop, IMHO.

Does it really bother you? Sometimes I'm concerned I'm a sociopath or similar because I don't care at all about the honor of complying with the license. If no one sees me pirate it and there are no consequences, who cares?

I do care about my fellow developer who wrote ST and seems a nice guy, which is a reason to pay... So maybe I'm not a sociopath after all.

Yes, it bothers me and I don't really understand the distinction you're making: the developer you admire is the one who wrote that license that "requires" payment so you pay for it because they asked you to, not because anyone's watching.

And as someone running a business, it is a significant and unnecessary liability to use pirated or unlicensed software.

There is no free version. The alert means you haven't paid for it.

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