ST3 Update now is ST4 | Hacker News Reader

ST3 Update now is ST4

forum.sublimetext.com

36 pointssherincall11 comments

Sublime Text 4 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27230042 - May 2021 (628 comments)

Also happened to me this morning. I gave-in and paid for the upgrade since I've been a happy Sublime user since inception. However, I am very disappointed in the overall performance compared to ST3. Indenting code via TAB takes approx. 500-850ms and is a noticeable delay that would annoy just about anyone. Overall it's a bit shocking. It seems like the creator could've been short on dough and came up with this dark strategy.

If you have any plug-ins installed, try uninstalling/re-installing to see if one of them might be the culprit. What you're describing isn't normal behavior.

I will try that. However, I have 2 more instances of problematic behavior which should be alarming to everyone:

1. I store my project/workspace files under ST's root installation folder and the upgrade DELETED them all

2. I'm running ST on Win10 and after the upgrade, ST4 is now installed under "C:\Program Files\Sublime Text 3". You would think that there'd be a post-install script to check executable path for 3 and change it to 4.

Seems like a bad UI caused by the change that means anyone who bought ST3 in the last 3 years can upgrade to ST4 with their current license.

They should have released a small ST3 update that detects if the license would be valid for ST4 and prompts the frictionless upgrade only for this case, and otherwise maybe just makes an alert that a paid update is available if you want it.

I am planning to upgrade though as I’m a satisfied user of ST2 and ST3.

I had this happen to me this morning on macOS: I saw there was an update available, accepted it, and ended up with ST4. I was planning on buying it in the immediate future anyways, but having it sprung on me actually saved me $10 (thanks to the release period discount).

Overall, I'm not too upset about this -- a lot of the commenters in the linked thread seem to think that software shouldn't change major versions without (more) explicit consent, but ST4's backwards compatibility appears to be perfect so far (I have all kinds of weird personal plugins that use less-documented parts of the ST API, and they're all still working). They could have certainly made the update message clearer, but I don't think the developers deserve the kind of indignation they're receiving.

Software updates shouldn't leave the user with nothing unless they pay. Also, on Linux, there is no indication that the prior license would be invalid, or that the upgrade required further payment.

And the prior license had no expiration date, and the new one expires in 3 years.

> Software updates shouldn't leave the user with nothing unless they pay.

I didn't leave it unregistered for long enough to confirm this, but: ST has historically been fully functional even when unregistered -- the only difference between a registered and unregistered copy is/was the nag dialogue they display every 10 saves. I don't think it's accurate to say that this update "leaves the user with nothing" -- the update was fully functional (and reversible!) right out of the box.

> Also, on Linux, there is no indication that the license would be invalid, or that the upgrade required further payment.

Same on macOS. I agree that this should have been made much more explicit.

On Ubuntu it's as easy as an `apt upgrade`.

Although I pay the fee happily, this does seem wrong. It seems to me that as a software provider you have two choices:

1. Make it a monthly (or whatever) subscription for the latest version (eg Photoshop)

2. Charge for a new version (eg apt install ST3 vs apt install ST4)

3. Let users pay for new features via something like patreon or a consulting firm (depending on if it's a B2C or B2B relationship.)

This was a bit of a shock this morning for sure. Leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Maybe it's time to commit to neovim after all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com