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Seems like a reasonable trade-off to me. I'm happy for them to have a sustainable business model and people seem quite willing to pay monthly for AI. As long as they keep the free version and the ability to disable AI features then I think everyone wins.

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> As long as they keep...

The thing is, they will have to switch to maximizing monetization (or die trying). Those investors are ultimately in control, and while they are happy to gain market share for now, that's what they will demand in the future.

They will keep a free version for as long as it's working for them, but you will be monetized, one way or another, sooner or later, and you might not enjoy it.

Agreed, but Zed is open source so I think that does offer some long term protection to users who like the editor and don't want AI.

We brought this upon ourselves. As much as we reviled forking over four hundred 1998-dollars to use Microsoft Word, shrink-wrapped closed-source was more honest way to make a living than the current surveillance schemes.

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