I think it’s pretty clear that ST3 is an artificial major version cutover (on an otherwise continuous development timeline) designed to generate more revenue. You’d have to be pretty naive not to see it.
That said, I don’t begrudge someone asking for compensation for the fruit of their labor. Developing software is a much more expensive effort than most realize. Furthermore, Jon is under no moral obligation to accommodate anyone else’s ideas about what they feel entitled to; he can set the price of his product wherever he likes. If you don’t think it’s worth it, buy a competing product instead. It’s a free market. No need to get emotional.
That said, I do want to throw my own 2c in: I now have a very different picture of what I thought I was buying into when I spent $60 on ST2. I now know that at this pace, ST won’t fully reach its promise of a full-featured, reasonably bug free code editor for another 3 or 4 versions at least, and I personally don’t think that’s worth $180 or more all told. Too many of the features in the final version of ST2 - albeit AWESOME features in part - are simply half-baked, and the feature set is far from comprehensive. I’ll check back in after a few years and let the early adopters fund the development in the meantime.