Sublime Forum

Why buy ST2 is so expensive?

#19

[quote=ā€œcastles_made_of_sandā€]@SeanWcom

Surely you mean $96, 000 a month right?[/quote]

Hey, if he WERE making that much money, more power to him. Iā€™m all about getting paid for hard work. But, $96,000 per month would mean that heā€™s selling 1,600 copies of ST2 per month. Thatā€™s over 50 licenses per day. Iā€™m not saying he isnā€™t - but that does seem like a bit much.

Ultimately it doesnā€™t matter. The issue at hand is the cost of the editor. I donā€™t think itā€™s expensive but as someone else pointed out, itā€™s all relative, so weā€™re in the world of opinion which we could argue about all day. :smile: Hereā€™s a thought: Call of Duty Black Ops 2 raked in over 500 million in 24 hours (at $60 bucks for the standard, non-collectorā€™s edition). Thatā€™s over 8.3 million copies sold in 24 hours. Thatā€™s 8.3 million people who donā€™t think $60 bucks is a lot to spend on a game. Why should it be a lot to spend on any other software? And weā€™re back to opinion. :smile:

I do want to mention that Iā€™m not intending to criticize anyone for their opinion, so I apologize if I came off that way. :smiley:

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#20

Agreed

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#21

If you are only looking at the number of forum members

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#22

I almost accused you of innumeracy.

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#23

[quote=ā€œSeanWcomā€]

[quote=ā€œcastles_made_of_sandā€]@SeanWcom

Surely you mean $96, 000 a month right?[/quote]

Hey, if he WERE making that much money, more power to him. Iā€™m all about getting paid for hard work. But, $96,000 per month would mean that heā€™s selling 1,600 copies of ST2 per month. Thatā€™s over 50 licenses per day. Iā€™m not saying he isnā€™t - but that does seem like a bit much.

Ultimately it doesnā€™t matter. The issue at hand is the cost of the editor. I donā€™t think itā€™s expensive but as someone else pointed out, itā€™s all relative, so weā€™re in the world of opinion which we could argue about all day. :smile: Hereā€™s a thought: Call of Duty Black Ops 2 raked in over 500 million in 24 hours (at $60 bucks for the standard, non-collectorā€™s edition). Thatā€™s over 8.3 million copies sold in 24 hours. Thatā€™s 8.3 million people who donā€™t think $60 bucks is a lot to spend on a game. Why should it be a lot to spend on any other software? And weā€™re back to opinion. :smile:

I do want to mention that Iā€™m not intending to criticize anyone for their opinion, so I apologize if I came off that way. :smiley:[/quote]

If the stats at wbond.net/sublime_packages/community are accurate, there are 838990 users of package control. Granted, not every package control user has paid for ST2, not every paying user use package control and there are many who have paid but have since switched to another editor. But as an exercise lets say that the numbers are totally accurate, that 10% of the Package Control users have paid for a license, that the editor has been in development for exactly 5 years and that it has always cost $59. That gives us (8389900.159)/(5*12) ~= $82500/month

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#24

What Package Control would benefit from is an API method for seeing if Sublime has been registered or not :smile:

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#25

But that is indeed pure speculationā€¦ if ST was such a lucrative business I donā€™t think Jon would keep working as a solo cowboy.

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#26

Unlessā€¦ he enjoy what he is doing ?

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#27

Hiring people doesnā€™t mean you donā€™t get to work anymoreā€¦ it means you get to finish your ideas faster.

If you choose your team wisely: 3 brains + 30 fingers > 1 brain + 10 fingers

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#28

Man, I wish you were right! Hiring more people usually means managing more people, letting you less time to code.

In theory, your math itā€™s good. In practice you will see that 3 brains + 30 fingers itā€™s not always better than 1 brain + 10 fingers. Been there, done that (although with only one brain plus at once :smile: ). Such a team you speak about itā€™s so rare that i think itā€™s a myth :mrgreen:

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#29

[quote=ā€œiamntzā€]Man, I wish you were right! Hiring more people usually means managing more people, letting you less time to code.

In theory, your math itā€™s good. In practice you will see that 3 brains + 30 fingers itā€™s not always better than 1 brain + 10 fingers. Been there, done that (although with only one brain plus at once :smile: ). Such a team you speak about itā€™s so rare that i think itā€™s a myth :mrgreen:[/quote]

As I said, it depends on how you choose and manage the team. I agree itā€™s not always the case, thatā€™s for sure. If the leader is not respected, and if there are conflicts between team mates, then itā€™s pretty much a fail.

Thatā€™s enough off topic for nowā€¦

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#30

Sure! Not that the rest of the project was very on topic! :mrgreen: :ugeek:

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#31

[quote=ā€œiamntzā€]

Sure! Not that the rest of the project was very on topic! :mrgreen: :ugeek:[/quote]

Topic? Topic?!? This is the internet! We donā€™t need no steenkin topic!

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#32

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#33

Someone already stole my bit. :smiley:

I mean, you can more or less assume that any medium or large business is gonna have bought licenses and, given that, if we say maybe 1 in 20 people are using a licensed copy then weā€™re looking at a few million dollars in revenue over the lifetime of ST. Thatā€™s extremely speculative but to say ST isnā€™t very profitable was probably conservative to say the least.

Anyway, I didnā€™t mean to be so abrasive in my first post, I was just very tired at the end of a nightmare week.

The price of ST probably isnā€™t unreasonable at all for some people, but for non-professionals like me all of the products listed in this thread are quite steep!

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#34

Jon is the quintessential mad scientist toiling away in solitude.

Doesnā€™t care much for distractions.

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#35

I find ST2 to be expensive also, but not in license costs. The $60 is peanuts compared to the investment in changing my workflow, and the opportunity costs from that.

Iā€™ve been using ST2 since October and Iā€™m still not sure if itā€™s for me. It has its quirks, but I can live with them because it also has great features. The biggest thing keeping me on the fence has been the development lifecycle. Itā€™s not OSS ā€“ fine, I donā€™t want to flog that horse again ā€“ but that does mean visibility into the productā€™s development progress is that much more important to me. Especially since itā€™s a one-man show. Yet there hasnā€™t been a blog post from the author since late July, and not even a ā€œnightlyā€ build since September.

This, to me, is why ST2 is expensive.

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#36

Completely agree.
OR (let me put this way): I donā€™t think that the price for ST2 is so highā€¦ or, at least, the productivity you get back pays for the cost of the product.
BUT, should I but ST2 today, with the above mentioned ā€œproblemsā€??

Donā€™t get me wrong: Iā€™m loving ST2, but some ā€œlife signalā€ from the developer would be appreciatedā€¦ :wink:

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#37

Very good point. I only recently discovered ST and I was on board all the time I thought the development speed was still high. I could ignore the flaws, expecting them to be ironed out within a reasonable timespan, but I havenā€™t scraped together the money for a license because I donā€™t want to line up behind the wrong product too soon. For an unpaid developer like me, itā€™s a substantial price to pay for something I might later regret.

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#38

memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2
Last visited:Fri Dec 21, 2012 11:22 am

itā€™s alive :wink:

:arrow_right: btw, iā€™m considering to buy ST2, but iā€™m waiting for some news. If today I buy ST2 , and tomorrow itā€™s launch of ST3 gonna be sad.

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