Why nobody pays for Sublime? | Hacker News Reader

Why nobody pays for Sublime?

I paid for it because it's valuable and deserves payment. I get paid for doing work in which I use it. I want its maker to continue to thrive and sustain it (a wish, I admit, that has not panned out as expected; development on Sublime Text is incredibly slow). All ethical logic says I should pay and so I did.

What makes you think that "nobody" pays for Sublime? Perhaps you mean, "I'm using this essential tool without paying for and I'd like to believe that lots of other people are also cheating its maker and would they please give me some rationalizations I can use to make myself feel better?" What's the question exactly?

Sublime text is purposefully "winrar free" (free to use but asks accepts payment for a license). I do agree that the developer has made a product of worth and I myself will be purchasing a license shortly to support him/her. However, it is not "morally" better to pay for the software or not as the developer has chosen to make it freely available to all with an internet connection.

Oh and to answer the original question (why do so many use sublime text without purchasing it), its because they don't want to spend the money and don't have to in order to use the editor

I paid for Sublime Text 2. Still use it all the time. Worth the money.

The "why nobody pays for" line reminds me that at one point, a comedy site announced "first person pays for mIrc IRC client!" because really, who would pay for that program? And yet, if you looked at the occasional charity sessions the author held, it appears mIrc was pulling in $40K-$50K per month. Not going to attract VCs, but good coin.

Because apart from the popup you eventually unconsciously dismiss every x number of saves, there's no reason to pay up.

I've been using it for 4 years unpaid, sublime has helped me get my first home. If I was forced to tomorrow because I could no longer use it I'd pay for it immediately, but right now there's nothing pushing me to part with my cash.

I would like to hire you for your honesty

Because I already got burned once paying for TextMate and having the development basically die. The same pattern seems to be happening with Sublime Text.

So I finally just started using Emacs instead. Setup my keybindings so they're Mac/Sublime Text like and wrote a little custom frame/window manager in elisp to make the application behave the way I want, and I'm free from having to worry about one of my core tools turning into abandonware.

I felt the same way. Bought a license for 2, then for 3. Then immediately watched a lack of updates for nearly a year (or any of substance). But the 3 "dev" channel is pretty active currently: http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev

None of that changes your point, that you're still at the mercy / whim of a developer.

> you're still at the mercy / whim of a developer

Well, aren't we all?

I paid; while I'm not a power user, and it's a bit finicky to code for, I don't see why I shouldn't pay.

If I released a "pay if you want" product I'd want people to feel like it's worth it and give me money. It'd be hypocritical for me not to pay.

I paid for it because I've found it superior than all the other text editors I've used (those that are comparable e.g. Atom / MS Code just seemed to steal all it's ideas). Plus it's a business expense so you save on the taxes.

It's:

* Cross-platform

* A small scale team

* One license and I can install it on all my machines

* Excellent plugins [1]

* Fast

* Low memory usage / leaks

* Lovely UI - tabs, distraction free, removal of dividers, scroll bars, text rendering

* Great syntax highlighting (I'm a solarized fan and it's implemented very faithfully)

* Originator of some very good and well implemented ideas (AFAIK) - Crtl+Shift+P, Distraction Free, Document Map

* F12 to go to the definition of the function / method

[1]: http://txfx.net/2014/11/08/my-sublime-text-3-packages/

Software developers are such a bunch of minging cheapskates. Giving the potential for high earnings it is a wonder why so many developers are so stingy. Paying $5000 - $10000 for a set of tools which their living depends on seems to be so much why?

How much do builders, cab drivers for instance, pay for their tools? Why does a group of people who consider themselves to be a profession have so much problem paying for tools? How much does a doctor, a lawyer, or dentist need to shell out in order to start practising?

This attitude among software developers needs to change. It is no wonder so many software tools are of such poor quality.

I am sure a lot of Sublime and Textmate users easily pay $100 for a night out on the town, so why should paying such an amount for a tool their living depends on be such a big issue.?

It might be the same for other professions if the tools were able to be obtained without payment. You'd think that people who make their living producing software that must be paid for to pay them that they wouldn't begrudge someone who makes their professional life all that much easier. (I paid for Sublime Text)

I paid for it. It's incredibly useful and I use it every day, and since I expect to get paid for apps I release, why would someone else's work be different?

I paid, since I use it professionally. Just like I would donate to useful open source software if they have an option for this. They do the same to my apps...

I did pay. It's a great product and nag screens annoy the hell out of me too.

I paid for it. Because I want to support the developer. Same as I do with music.

I paid since it's a tool I'm using on more or less on a daily basis.

Honestly, I perceive the price as too high, even though I use it day in and day out.

The price is also above my imaginary software impulse buy level. If it were $19, I would have already impulse bought a copy.

If it turned into trialware that disabled features after a certain amount of time, I'd ditch it and use another editor. Lame, but I'm being honest.

I bought it because I use it. Every. Single. Day. So, almost any price is worth a tool that is used constantly and delivers untold benefit. It might not be the same for you; you might not get as much value out of it as I do. But if its something you truly use "day in and day out" how can you not purchase it? It just makes good sense.

Listen, good tools are hard to come by and supporting those tools helps to ensure that they are there when you need them. Not supporting something that helps you make money endangers your ability to continue to make money. That's my $.02

I agree. $70 seems steep for a text editor, no matter how good it is. I use Textpad, which I got my company to pay for years ago, but it's much cheaper. Maybe it's not as good as Sublime, but it's good enough. Since I know the nag screen would bug the heck out of me, and I'm too cheap to pony up $70 (and not willing to go to the trouble of talking my boss into paying for it), I'm not tempted to even try Sublime.

I was always intending to pay for Sublime but I no longer use it, now using vim for all of my editing needs.

Opinions on nagware aside, Sublime is a good tool and I did feel bad about using it to make a living and not contributing.. but I was also afraid to get too attached to a closed source editor. I think maybe sublime is kind of in a deadzone of being a nagware text editor that is free to use, but not an IDE with a huge feature set for an ecosystem that requires it, or an IDE that accesses some kind of propeitary vender-locked tech stack. For everything that's good about it, ultimately it's just a text editor and there are a lot of text editors of similar power out there if you're not looking for a sexy GUI.

So, I have no idea.

My guess is that Jon Skinner was more interested in capturing users to help him make a great editor than in maximizing the capture of money from fewer customers.

If he wanted to maximize the capture of money, instead of nagware it should be a exploding trial, perhaps for days of use instead of calendar days.

Probably the right price for Sublime Text is $49/year with upgrades included or, if not tecnically feasible, $99 permanent with no upgrade discounts. It might seem counterintuititive not to offer upgrade discounts, but Someone who has paid you once the full price is a lot more likely to pay you again the full price for a new version, especially at sub-$100 price point.

most developers hate paying for development tools. thats just how it is.

I payed for Sublime a long time ago for 2 reasons: 1) if I'm publishing plugins for it, I should probably have a legit license for it. 2) It's the best text editor out there for me, period. I use it enough I owe it to Jon to buy a license.

That said, I doubt I'll pay for any future versions licenses. I don't want to rely on closed source tools, and the editor/IDE arena has always been one of the areas I can't seem to go totally FOSS. Hopefully atom continues to improve; I might switch over when 1.0 comes out.

When I started using Sublime it seemed that the new version was just around the corner, and I thought there would probably be some sort of release (or near release) discount just around the corner as well.

Then the project went silent, came back, but had this weird we're back but we are mostly telling it to paying customers, so it was a bit confusing what was going on. I'm kinda still waiting to see if I should switch editor or if the release of sublime3 will reawaken the plugin ecosystem.

tl;dr: bad excuses.

If they collect stats on this (and I'm sure they do!) the data will be skewed. I've purchased it twice over the last few years and feel entitled to download the free version everytime because I'll be on a new/formatted computer. It's just faster, but I've still technically paid.

I have it but I don't use it much.. if at all.. I use Atom.. If the license was around half of what is it or if I can find an license on a discount I probably would and start using it regularly. It is not part of my daily routine.. For example I have IntelliJ license because this is what I use

Because it's free and not that different? To clarify, I use and I don't pay; but am seriously considering; probably will pay once beta's over (I'm using the beta for version 3); definitely appreciate the tool; I really enjoying using Sublime tool.

Im a casual coder and love the built in features, but never paid because I never identified as a full time developer. I always thought I would pay for it once I needed all the time, but that never happened.

Now I use Atom, not the same hot keys but good enough for a few docs a month.

I haven't paid for it yet, but have used for a couple of years. The reasoning was simply that v3 was about to drop, so I figured I'd wait for that before buying.

At this point though, I'm ready to move onto a more serious IDE.

Great product I use everyday. If you like and use a tool support it. I paid.

Is the premise of this question valid? I've noticed about a 50/50 split anecdotally. Does anybody know the real #s? (What % of users pay?)

Because it's OSS, and there are at least 10 variation products also on the market, namely Brackets, Visual Studio Code, ATOM, etc.

no its not?

I paid, and I use it daily, but I have noticed the drop-off in support lately.

Please could someone correct the grammar in the question?

why would i pay $70 when i can get 75% of the features for free (textmate, textwrangler)

Depends how much you value the other features - if my professional time is worth $100k/year and sublime makes me more than 0.07% more efficient compared to using another editor than spending $70 yearly or less might make sense.

Why use Sublime at all if you have vim and emacs?

https://xkcd.com/378/

Why use emacs or vim if you have ed?

Why use ed if you have cat?

Why use cat if you have a magnetized needle and a steady hand?

Why use a magnetized needle and a steady hand when you have an IBM 029 keypunch station?

Abacus. Fingers of two hands. Sand or clay to write on. ...

Don't write at all.

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