The revenue would be the same of today. You can sell licenses of an open source software. One might argue that nobody would buy because you can get for free, but it's not different today with the infinite trial.
At least with current ST the 'tutorials' for this tend to involve hex editors or scripts that can be quietly subverted by the author.
Keep in mind the context of this conversation is a conjecture that Sublime's nag screen led to purchases out of convenience for the users making those payments (who could've easily patched the binaries but didn't). Disagree with that premise if you want, but if so, clarify that you're doing that.
If my last comment wasn't clear, I think the dent in revenue would be considerable for fully open-sourcing Sublime as it would make it too easy for people to patch out the nag.
> Huh, I started that premise and I'm continuing to argue it. You might be thrown off by HN's busted comment nesting.
I'm asking that your argument is internally consistent—that you're not trying to advance some thought, and the backtrack to a position where you advance another one that's at odds with the original. I don't see how this suggests that there's confusion about how to read threaded comments.
What provision of the GPL, specifically, provides this supposed protection?
So, no, it doesn't protect nag screens at all.
> Section 1 is the verbatim copies permission, section 2 merely requires [...]
To clarify an important point of fact: Section 2 is additive. It builds upon the terms enumerated in Section 1. You only get to exercise the right to make modifications if you satisfy the extended provisions from Section 2 on top of your obligations from Section 1. To wit, Section 2 allows you to "distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions".
That is, you cannot perform actions under Section 2 without also fulfilling your obligations from Section 1.
> not to preserve the pre-existing copyrigut notice of the original one
This is not true. It would be true if the GPLv2 required that you merely maintain some form of fair attribution. But that's not what it says.
You are obligated under Section 1 to "keep intact all the notices that refer to this License". (And you are not allowed under Section 2 to shirk your obligations from Section 1. See above.) If the original author includes a notice as simple as, "This copy of Sublime Text Community Edition is based upon Sublime Text Pro and made available to you under the GNU General Public License, version 2", then no provision of the license permits you to distribute modifications where you've replaced the notice with one of your own, even if you think it's fair. Anyone getting away with this today is only able to do so in cases where the original author is looking the other way because the downstream modifications are more or less in the spirit of the license, even if they aren't technically following it to the letter.
That GPLv2 allows for this should not even be surprising—it's similar to the philosophy behind including provisions for Invariant Texts in the GFDL. It's only if you view things through the hazy lens of history where licenses like Creative Commons have shown up and maybe distorted one's general understanding that this comes off as unexpected.
Finally: I constantly find that I want to kick myself when I get involved in licensing discussions here that deal in anything other than the most blunted, obvious aspects of FOSS licensing. So this will be my last comment in this thread.
This is wrong - the GPL only requires that the source code of the modified versions be made available. The nag text could be put in the license notice text itself (the original license should be preserved in modified versions), but that might change the license from GPL to GPL-based/GPL-compat. IANAL.