Sublime's future and open source

[skarkkai]

Not a commitment for your OS (whatever that might be), but a comment of rather seeing it opensourced than abandoned was made by jps

I'd like to see him state clearly that in the event Sublime Text is no longer sold commercially, it will be open sourced. I fully approve of jps' interest in making money from the software, and I think making such a promise would not damage the business potential, but increase it.

[iamntz]

It's funny how people think that an open source project will have success and how this will affect your decision to buy it.

Just think about e-text, how it was open sourced like an year before the author suddenly decided to go silenzio stampa and how the development was very active!

[weslly]

It's funny how people think that an open source project will have success and how this will affect your decision to buy it.

Just think about e-text, how it was open sourced like an year before the author suddenly decided to go silenzio stampa and how the development was very active!

That's exactly what I was going to say!

Also, textmate is only very active right now because at least 95% of the current changes are being made by his creator (Allan Odgaard), even though it is now open source.

I doubt sublime would go far without Jon.

[skarkkai]

It's funny how people think that an open source project will have success and how this will affect your decision to buy it.

I'm not saying that an open source project will automatically or perhaps even likely have success. Many don't. Open source is far from a magic bullet.

What open source does more or less ensure, however, is that it's possible to keep using the software in new versions of operating systems. It's usually little effort to fix the application such that it compiles on new versions of the operating system libraries. If an open source application is at all popular, someone is very likely to maintain it at least to the degree of making it work in current versions of relevant platforms.

That's all I want: confidence that I'll be able to keep using Sublime Text several years past the time its commercial development ends, were that to one day happen. I believe that's also Tack's interest.

[tack]

That's all I want: confidence that I'll be able to keep using Sublime Text several years past the time its commercial development ends, were that to one day happen. I believe that's also Tack's interest.

Yeah, that's exactly it. When I think about my current workflow, which involves vim and a bunch of tiled terminals, this is how I've worked for the past 15 years. I have a tremendous muscle-memory investment. Now ST2 has some pretty awesome functionality (including and especially Goto Anything) that's really luring me away from my tried-and-true terms+vim setup.

But if I'm taking the plunge seriously, which requires easily months worth of retraining and unlearning previous habits (like no replace mode in Vintage mode? Arggh!) and doing that makes me more productive, there's no reason to think ST2 couldn't be the foundation of my workflow for the next 15 years.

So when we're talking about 10-15 years in the future, a closed source, single developer project really is a legitimate concern. I'm surprised by the dismissive attitude on this thread so far. Clearly these users change editors more easily than I do.

[weslly]

no replace mode in Vintage mode? Arggh!

I'm not saying that this is a solution for your problem but the Vintage mode is open source and if you're missing some feature from vim you can always help: https://github.com/sublimehq/Vintage

Even though I love sublime and I would hate to see it die, I can always go back to VIM.

[tack]

I'm not saying that this is a solution for your problem but the Vintage mode is open source and if you're missing some feature from vim you can always help: https://github.com/sublimehq/Vintage

Oh yeah, attempt to hack my own replace mode was the first thing I did.

Unfortunately I failed because although I can toggle overwrite mode from a plugin, I couldn't find a way to set it specifically on or off, or detect what the current overwrite mode was. As a result, even the existing insert mode is broken, because it retains the overwrite setting between toggling from command mode and insert mode. (From command mode, hit i to enter insert mode, hit the insert key to toggle overwrite, hit escape to go back to command mode, then hit i again. You're still overwriting text.)

I couldn't find anything in the plugin documentation to help me get further. I'd intended to start a separate thread about it. More to the point (of this thread), although Vintage mode is OSS, because the core isn't, my efforts were derailed in short order.

[growdigital]

Have fun with Notepad++ !

TextMate 2 is open source (but you do need a mac!!)

[tack]

Have fun with Notepad++ !

TextMate 2 is open source (but you do need a mac!!)

And Notepad++ is Windows only. I use Linux.

But anyway, all that is really beside the point. I'm pretty sure S0und didn't bother to read my post.

[adriancho]

Sublime Text is great I love it, so imagine what it would if it were open source, I hope someday release the code.

For those looking for a free alternative http://foicica.com/textadept/

Sorry for my bad english.