I assumed this was a blog post from the author of Sublime Text until I opened it.
This is the most entitled article I've read for a very long time.
It also asserts with no evidence that VSCode is popular because "it is open source" rather than the more obvious, "It has the backing of Microsoft".
There are thousands of less popular open source editors out there. And yet Sublime is one of the few pieces of software I've actually paid for (admittedly not since ST2).
Did they edit the article or something? I don't think it sounds entitled at all. Sounds to me like the author is just innocently wondering if open sourcing it might help them compete and wants to see them succeed.
And there is a mention of "backing of Microsoft" being part of the advantage: "With the rapid pace of VSCode development with the backing of Microsoft, I don’t see any other way SublimeText can keep up unless they make the editor open-source."
Maybe for the Thing™, but from where I stand it does seem like Sublime Text might be headed towards the Abandonware territory if they don't wake up
It had a presence at some point, now every company I visit I see a lot of VS Code and Sublime is nowhere to be found on people's screens. I switched too. I liked sublime text a little better but VSC is free and the Rust integration was very pain free. I have painful memories of having to configure build systems sometimes with Sublime (not with Rust - I didn't use Rust at the time).
And I waste 8 seconds every time I need to boot it up...
I don't know. For a while, Sublime hit a slump, where 2 was no longer actively maintained, but 3 an unfinished beta that also didn't seem to receive much public updates, but that's been resolved years ago, and from all public indicators, Sublime is a healthy, steady business these days, with regular releases for both Text and Merge and new employees getting hired.
I recently tackled this with my side projects and created an open source contingency plan (https://www.candid.dev/open-source/). Basically, if a product goes without an update for six months, it will be released under the MPL-2.0. I am still working on finding some kind of foundation that can keep the code in escrow, for now it is just written online and in the LLC operating agreement.
They've been around since 2008. They released a huge major version change (4.0.0) just 2 years ago.
They've released 12 builds in the past year[0]. They released 3 builds in one month last December. Two weeks ago was their most recent patch. Here's the most recent patch from two weeks ago on this "Abandonware". They have Mac/Windows/Linux specific fixes as well as fixes to their API. They're not just fixing bugs either, new improvements have been added.
Sublime deserves all the money they make. The price is super reasonable. You may be confusing "Abandonware" with "Mature software that doesn't need any major fuck-up changes anymore because all of its users love the way it works and happily spend money on it"
BUILD 4148
14 Mar 2023
Various syntax highlighting improvements
Last tab in a group can now be selected with alt+9 (Windows/Linux) and cmd+9 (Mac)
Split View retains the original view's viewport position
The window title now indicates whether Sublime Text is running with administrator privileges
Improved indentation detection for files with many single space indents
Fixed first character beyond ASCII range not being decoded/encoded for short code pages
Find in Files no longer cancels ongoing search with a renamed buffer
Fixed regression where ./ wouldn't work in the "Where" field of find-in-files
Fixed find settings confusion when run immediately after find_under_expand
Fixed minimap viewport highlighting not working when color schemes specify a text background
Reopen Closed File now uses the window's file history by default rather than global history
Fixed annotations displaying incorrectly when "ui_scale" is set to something other than 1
Fixed issue where the command palette could consume key presses while not having input focus
Fixed syntax-based folding not working correctly with some indented code
Fixed backtracking bug where tokens were being dropped
Fixed some hangs caused by syntax backtracking
Fixed tabs of deleted files incorrectly showing as modified in some cases
Fixed word wrap wrapping early in some cases
API: Added Window.num_views_in_group
API: Fixed inconsistent focus after Window.open_file
Mac: Better support for running as root
Mac: Added workaround for Monterey bug causing scrolling to misbehave
Linux: Fixed incorrect mouse behavior at window edges
Linux, Mac: Attempt to find the license key for the user when using sudo
For anyone else curious, the most recent update on their site seems to be from May 21, 2021, so almost two years ago -- but unless I missed it, this does not seem to be mentioned by the article.
The author seems to simply be saying that VSCode is more popular because it's open source, and therefore Sublime should go open source. Not sure I quite follow.
As a currently happy Sublime user, my issue is that there has been almost radio silence on the project. My license is up soon and I am seriously considering not renewing if there is not any movement on _any_ development soon.
There has been one news/update post in the past 1.5 years. The most recent was November 2022 and then May 2021 before that. I would appreciate any sort of update, and I would also appreciate being told if the project is going to be abandoned.
> As a currently happy Sublime user, my issue is that there has been almost radio silence on the project. My license is up soon and I am seriously considering not renewing if there is not any movement on _any_ development soon.
So, you are a happy user but you also want active development. What are you looking for, precisely, that needs to be developed?
I've been a Sublime Text user since ST 1, and I've used it as my only editor for years. ST4 added nice things like automatic theme switching, but for everything else it's feature-complete for me. Is there something you're missing?
There was a blog post about ST4 in 11/2022[1] indicating Build 4142. My current version is Build 4143 so there's been at least one other one since.
Personally, if it keeps working (and boy does ST keep working), then who cares if it's not actively developed? I know at some point it becomes a problem, like with TextMate back in the day, but we're pretty far from that.
> When it comes to making money, the SublimeText developers can offer the core version of SublimeText for free, while they can sell a pro version with more advanced features targeted towards more advanced users and developers.
Sublime has been known for years for its generous trialware, where a countless number of users just click past the popup suggesting buying. Such users have already decided they want all the features of Sublime just for free and the devs have allowed for that without restriction. The suggested scenario would ironically make the available free version worse.
Plus there has already been a healthy plugin community for Sublime. I wouldn't doubt it might receive a boost from being open source but if we contrast with Atom editor, which recently officially EoL'd and was open source, it didn't make it a superior experience to Sublime ime, despite how much functionality the community was eager to replicate.
Which isn't to say I would be against them going open source, just that I don't feel the reasoning is persuasive in the article.
Sublime Text editor is my day-dreaming destination when I feel depressed of work. It makes me really happy that 2-3 people can actually build something, sell a piece of it in an non-disturbing way, and do this for a living.
It's also one of the best shareware models ( Is this even a word these days? ), that I've ever stumbled upon.
Lots of people have pointed out how entitled this article is. There's another problem with this article.
The author assumes that his plans for the future are in alignment with or superior to the vision of the authors / ip owners of Sublime.
There's plenty of room for great free and open source tools and great proprietary development tools. Always has been... Emacs, Eclipse and VS Code haven't killed off the paid IDEs. Sublime's niche has a long tradition of paid and free tools. What is good is that Sublime has found a way to survive, and hopefully prosper. That should be celebrated... and maybe the lesson is why they are able to survive in spite of great free competition. (this also applies to JetBrains, WingIDE and many other commercial development tools, all of which are great values for developers)
Honestly, I don't see competing with VS Code as much of a goal: it takes a world-beating development effort, and you will likely not have a self-sustaining organization in the end. For Microsoft, they get a way to distribute Copilot, Azure, Github and proprietary add-ons. For a smaller company, you may not have a way to create a sustainable team to maintain the product.
I know you're joking, but as a US dev I am very well compensated, and I don't even blink at giving JetBrains a hundred bucks a year for IntelliJ. Good tools make my life better.
I'm not a sublime user, but if I was, if it was critical to my workflow, I would absolutely pay for it.
I paid for it as a college student a decade ago. I literally did all my coursework in it, it felt like a no-brainer to throw some money at a company that made a great product that I relied on.
It really does baffle me how many software engineers making six figures and buying $7 lattes every day will balk at spending even a couple bucks on a useful app.
Sublime is an awesome piece of software written with so much effort put into performance. I don't see why the author should open source it. People who like open source editors only have many options. Open sourcing Sublime text would just mean the amount of paying users would drop to a much lower number, and the authors would be forced to write CRUD apps in some company. Once it goes open source there would be a new free open source distribution and all corporate money would drop I think.
On HN the sentiment for many things that everyone else can make enough money via donations/patreon and do some consulting or merchandising. However, very few HN developers would choose that over their well paying jobs writing closed source software.
Readit News
The SublimeText people make a living by developing and selling a honest product (and they're probably happy doing that).
There's nothing wrong with not competing with VSCode.
This is the most entitled article I've read for a very long time.
It also asserts with no evidence that VSCode is popular because "it is open source" rather than the more obvious, "It has the backing of Microsoft".
There are thousands of less popular open source editors out there. And yet Sublime is one of the few pieces of software I've actually paid for (admittedly not since ST2).
I'm a VS Code user despite that. I just find it to be far superior to everything else. It's what I hoped Atom would have been.
And there is a mention of "backing of Microsoft" being part of the advantage: "With the rapid pace of VSCode development with the backing of Microsoft, I don’t see any other way SublimeText can keep up unless they make the editor open-source."
It had a presence at some point, now every company I visit I see a lot of VS Code and Sublime is nowhere to be found on people's screens. I switched too. I liked sublime text a little better but VSC is free and the Rust integration was very pain free. I have painful memories of having to configure build systems sometimes with Sublime (not with Rust - I didn't use Rust at the time).
And I waste 8 seconds every time I need to boot it up...
They've released 12 builds in the past year[0]. They released 3 builds in one month last December. Two weeks ago was their most recent patch. Here's the most recent patch from two weeks ago on this "Abandonware". They have Mac/Windows/Linux specific fixes as well as fixes to their API. They're not just fixing bugs either, new improvements have been added.
Sublime deserves all the money they make. The price is super reasonable. You may be confusing "Abandonware" with "Mature software that doesn't need any major fuck-up changes anymore because all of its users love the way it works and happily spend money on it"
BUILD 4148 14 Mar 2023
Various syntax highlighting improvements
Last tab in a group can now be selected with alt+9 (Windows/Linux) and cmd+9 (Mac)
Split View retains the original view's viewport position
The window title now indicates whether Sublime Text is running with administrator privileges
Improved indentation detection for files with many single space indents
Fixed first character beyond ASCII range not being decoded/encoded for short code pages
Find in Files no longer cancels ongoing search with a renamed buffer
Fixed regression where ./ wouldn't work in the "Where" field of find-in-files
Fixed find settings confusion when run immediately after find_under_expand
Fixed minimap viewport highlighting not working when color schemes specify a text background
Reopen Closed File now uses the window's file history by default rather than global history
Fixed annotations displaying incorrectly when "ui_scale" is set to something other than 1
Fixed issue where the command palette could consume key presses while not having input focus
Fixed syntax-based folding not working correctly with some indented code
Fixed backtracking bug where tokens were being dropped
Fixed some hangs caused by syntax backtracking
Fixed tabs of deleted files incorrectly showing as modified in some cases
Fixed word wrap wrapping early in some cases
API: Added Window.num_views_in_group
API: Fixed inconsistent focus after Window.open_file
Mac: Better support for running as root
Mac: Added workaround for Monterey bug causing scrolling to misbehave
Linux: Fixed incorrect mouse behavior at window edges
Linux, Mac: Attempt to find the license key for the user when using sudo
0: https://www.sublimetext.com/dev
The author seems to simply be saying that VSCode is more popular because it's open source, and therefore Sublime should go open source. Not sure I quite follow.
I switched from VSCode to Sublime Text. While Rust Analyzer has best support in VSC it works more than ok in Sublime Text.
I had no problem paying for Sublime Text (and Sublime Merge). My mbp has enough battery and RAM but there is no reason for VSC to be that hungry.
There has been one news/update post in the past 1.5 years. The most recent was November 2022 and then May 2021 before that. I would appreciate any sort of update, and I would also appreciate being told if the project is going to be abandoned.
So, you are a happy user but you also want active development. What are you looking for, precisely, that needs to be developed?
I've been a Sublime Text user since ST 1, and I've used it as my only editor for years. ST4 added nice things like automatic theme switching, but for everything else it's feature-complete for me. Is there something you're missing?
Personally, if it keeps working (and boy does ST keep working), then who cares if it's not actively developed? I know at some point it becomes a problem, like with TextMate back in the day, but we're pretty far from that.
[1] https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/2022/11
Sublime has been known for years for its generous trialware, where a countless number of users just click past the popup suggesting buying. Such users have already decided they want all the features of Sublime just for free and the devs have allowed for that without restriction. The suggested scenario would ironically make the available free version worse.
Plus there has already been a healthy plugin community for Sublime. I wouldn't doubt it might receive a boost from being open source but if we contrast with Atom editor, which recently officially EoL'd and was open source, it didn't make it a superior experience to Sublime ime, despite how much functionality the community was eager to replicate.
Which isn't to say I would be against them going open source, just that I don't feel the reasoning is persuasive in the article.
It's also one of the best shareware models ( Is this even a word these days? ), that I've ever stumbled upon.
Keep up the good work, folks!
The author assumes that his plans for the future are in alignment with or superior to the vision of the authors / ip owners of Sublime.
There's plenty of room for great free and open source tools and great proprietary development tools. Always has been... Emacs, Eclipse and VS Code haven't killed off the paid IDEs. Sublime's niche has a long tradition of paid and free tools. What is good is that Sublime has found a way to survive, and hopefully prosper. That should be celebrated... and maybe the lesson is why they are able to survive in spite of great free competition. (this also applies to JetBrains, WingIDE and many other commercial development tools, all of which are great values for developers)
Honestly, I don't see competing with VS Code as much of a goal: it takes a world-beating development effort, and you will likely not have a self-sustaining organization in the end. For Microsoft, they get a way to distribute Copilot, Azure, Github and proprietary add-ons. For a smaller company, you may not have a way to create a sustainable team to maintain the product.
99 USD should be in your couch cushions, Tesla cupholder, or the bottom of your messenger bag.
I'm not a sublime user, but if I was, if it was critical to my workflow, I would absolutely pay for it.
Competing with VSCode is not really possible, or necessary.
On HN the sentiment for many things that everyone else can make enough money via donations/patreon and do some consulting or merchandising. However, very few HN developers would choose that over their well paying jobs writing closed source software.