[quote=“macjohnmcc”]This is what happens when you have a project where only one person is running everything. Especially if the product is not paying for their living expenses.
I suspect that because Sublime Text will let you use it indefinitely without paying that many people use it without paying. There may be a huge user base but I suspect a large number of them do not pay.[/quote]
Both of these assessments strike me as accurate. It’s easy to armchair quarterback this – if Sublime Text was only a $29 editor, but had a true time-limited demo rather than merely a nag screen, would it bring in more money overall? – but there’s no way to prove (or disprove) a hypothetical. And I think it’s certainly true that Jon and Kari could be markedly more communicative; the comparison to TextMate’s defenders during its dark years is apt in at least one respect: it’s profoundly silly to maintain that “develop the software” and “write one or two blog posts a month to let us know you’re still here” are mutually exclusive. (Well, two respects: I’m sure Jon is aware of the frustration this causes, just like Allan was aware of the frustration around TextMate 2, and in both cases the response seems to be to hunker down and maintain radio silence, which I genuinely believe is the wrong approach.)
Having said that, the assertion that the project is dead because it’s been nearly five months since the last build release is also profoundly silly. It was seven months between that release and the previous one. There are applications I use on a regular basis that see months pass between point releases – builds with less changes between them than we usually see between ST3 builds – and some big-name applications are considerably slower.
I understand the frustration, but the panic seems a bit premature.