Secret dream : make Sublime Text open source

[tux.]

"Open Source" does not mean you can't sell licenses.

There are a lot of commercial PHP scripts out there, and they are all "open source" by default. vBulletin, for example, makes quite a lot of money.
However, why?

[Luke]

I think it's fine the way it is now. Jon seems a lot more dedicated. And if he'd rather open source the project then see the development stall, I have faith in that.

I know a lot of people feel burned about TM2. I definitely felt burned. No one really knows why Allan's project flopped, but I believe part of the problem was he promising TM2 would be a free upgrade. Despite that promise I was willing to pay full price for TM2 if it ever saw the light of day. Now TM2 is just a failed opportunity.

I'll say one thing about Jon that is vastly different than Allan: At least Jon has no problem communicating with his customers. I know there hasn't been a blog since January, but I can see his tweets on Twitter, some posts on the forum, responses on User Echo, and regular updates on Sublime 2 Alpha.

Something I would recommend doing is giving users the ability to donate $5 per month on top of the license fee (if they want to). I would totally do that because a good editor like this deserves it in my book. What ever I can do to help Jon with his development.

[lucian]

I think Sublime's plugin support is so good, not being open source isn't a big deal.

As long as the developer is receptive to requests (ARM linux version please?) and promises to open source it when he no longer wishes to develop on it/gets bought out, I'm fine with investing time and money into Sublime.

[oxman]

Like I said, Sublime Text can't be accept by the linux world until it became open source.
And then, its a mandatory to have the guarantee the project will never die except if the user let it dieing.

[Praxis]

Please guys, have you read my link about Fairware? I'm telling you that the "money/open source" problem is something that I think can be addressed. Why keep answering "but open source means no money / hobby development"?

That being said, it's re-assuring to know that Jon would rather see ST being open source than to see its development stall. However, I still think that there's a danger similar to TextMate's death for ST. If ST makes a lot of money without any work on Jon's part, then he has no incentive to either work on it or make it open source. Will he stay true to his principles? I hope so, but for the user, it's still a risk.

Now, please, tell me stuff like "your Fairware thing can't work because...", but not stuff like "open source means no money".

BTW... I tried ST alpha yesterday. It's pretty cool. Rough edges (of course) so I can't replace TextMate yet, but cool...

Because, generally speaking, open source means no money/hobby development.

Listen--I respect your view, but I think you're wrong. I think many users are fair. I think most users are...lazy. And cheap. If there's an easy download that's free, they'll do it. If there is no easy download that's free, but an easy way to pay ,then many will take it (the iTunes effect). I think that there are many, many developers out there who don't care about intellectual property despite their avocation. An open source version would siphon a ton of sales, even if there's no downloadable binary (we *are* developers after all, we can get it built). And a downloadable pirated binary would become available anyway; heck, it *will* be available even as things stand now. There'll be a ton of demand.

I will say that developers are probably more sensitive to annoying DRM than others; I could imagine (hypothetically) some sort of draconian copy protection that would do more harm than good. But a guy that's offering completely unrestricted betas does not exactly strike me as the guy to do something like that, so I'd give it long odds. (By the way, there's an easy mark for the people who won't pay--just grab one of the unrestricted betas! Works great!).

Perhaps most importantly: it's an issue of *control*. Jon, thank goodness, seems to be taking extreme care in how his creation is being crafted. Have you seen Notepad++ lately? It's good for what it is, and has tons of features, but it doesn't have people raving about it like TextMate (and now, Sublime Text). The way it goes right now, Jon has every bit of control over his interpretation of what a text editor ought to be like. Happily, I rather agree with him (and apparently most of you do, too).

I have every bit of confidence that should Jon not wish to make money from ST any more, he would open source it. No, I don't know him. He doesn't know me. I'm just not that concerned, though. I respect those who are concerned, but I just can't bring myself to tell someone to give away their work. You want to invest all that time and make it open source? Great. Just don't insist that others do the work and release it on your terms.

[senshikaze]

As an advocate for open source and free(libre) software, I would love to see sublime open source. I release almost all of my personal code open source (not much as of now), and I wouldn't release it any other way.

That being said, I paid for a license for Sublime 2.

Want to know why? The developer is releasing a linux client. It may be a slight pain in the ass to update on linux, but not too much. Sublime is a great (if expensive) text editor, and it fills the niche that notepad++ has filled on windows. Gedit is nice, but it isn't in the same league in my opinion. I support companies and developers that support me. Sublime would be just another cool text editor I couldn't have if there wasn't a Linux client. Do I wish it was open source? Sure. Does it have to be? No. Is it helpful to ask every developer and his dog that wants to support Linux to release their software open source? Hell no.

To the dev: take it from this linux user, you are doing great, and I hope to be using Sublime 2 for a long time.

[hsoft]

Because, generally speaking, open source means no money/hobby development.

Listen--I respect your view, but I think you're wrong. I think many users are fair. I think most users are...lazy. And cheap. If there's an easy download that's free, they'll do it. If there is no easy download that's free, but an easy way to pay ,then many will take it (the iTunes effect). I think that there are many, many developers out there who don't care about intellectual property despite their avocation. An open source version would siphon a ton of sales, even if there's no downloadable binary (we *are* developers after all, we can get it built). And a downloadable pirated binary would become available anyway; heck, it *will* be available even as things stand now. There'll be a ton of demand.

I agree that users are lazy, I say so in my fairware introduction. It's a point I already address with fairware by making the "nag screen" easier to remove by contributing than by figuring how to "unfairly" remove it.

My experiment shows interesting results with my main application: All hours I invest in it are paid at a rate that is very similar to the money I was receiving when it was closed source, so empirical evidence seems to be on my side here. I wrote an article about that success at http://www.hardcoded.net/articles/fairw ... -works.htm

Perhaps most importantly: it's an issue of *control*. Jon, thank goodness, seems to be taking extreme care in how his creation is being crafted. Have you seen Notepad++ lately? It's good for what it is, and has tons of features, but it doesn't have people raving about it like TextMate (and now, Sublime Text). The way it goes right now, Jon has every bit of control over his interpretation of what a text editor ought to be like. Happily, I rather agree with him (and apparently most of you do, too).

I think you're making a mistake here by associating open source with "free for all" development where everyone adds his own little feature and we end up with an unmaintainable mess. It's very possible to maintain control of an open source application, all you have to do is to avoid accepting all code contributions.

I have every bit of confidence that should Jon not wish to make money from ST any more, he would open source it. No, I don't know him. He doesn't know me. I'm just not that concerned, though. I respect those who are concerned, but I just can't bring myself to tell someone to give away their work. You want to invest all that time and make it open source? Great. Just don't insist that others do the work and release it on your terms.

I don't insist that Jon releases his work as open source. It's his work, he does whatever he wants. I'm merely expressing my discomfort at the close-ness of ST's source, mentioning risks for the user and pointing to a past case where users were hurt by this (TextMate). You may do wishful thinking all you want, but it is still possible for this to happen with ST, a likely case being ST making a lot of money and Jon not wanting to work on it anymore. In this case, Jon has no incentive for either working on ST or open sourcing it, and this would hurt the users.