There is a paid version and a free version. I meant that the free version works fine, except you get an occasional alert.
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'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).
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.
I do get mad when people don't give them money since I really appreciate the model.
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.
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.
And as someone running a business, it is a significant and unnecessary liability to use pirated or unlicensed software.