12 ms·

With the wealth of high quality and extremely portable code editors out there I never understood how one could justify using a proprietary closed source editor.

• pjmlp 9y ago
  Because as software developer I want the developers of my tools to be able to pay for their needs, just like I want my customers to pay for my software. And no one can pay a mortgage or their kids school just from donations.
  • awestroke 9y ago
    You can charge for Open Source Software
    • dpark 9y ago
      Of course you can. Charging is different from actually getting paid, though. Are there any examples of open source dev tools that pay a full time salary from actual customer payments?
      • makapuf 9y ago
        Maybe not fulltime but I'd say tiled map editor seem to have stable income.
        • dpark 9y ago
          Is that actually a dev tool? That seems like a hobbyist tool. Devs are the hardest people to get to pay for software for some reason.
          • pjmlp 9y ago
            Check any old Byte magazine, it was quite common to pay for our tools, even freeware ones. Although those that could not afford them, usually would just pirate them. With the rise of FOSS, a new generation came to life feeling entitled to use the work of others for free while being paid for theirs. Thing is, pull requests and bug reports don't pay bills, neither is every kind of tool payable just with consulting, training or selling books. Now if every other profession was like this....
          • makapuf 9y ago
            Devs use this tool to make 2d games so that may count.
      • robinhood 9y ago
        Yes, sort of. Sidekiq, for instance. The core product is free (and perfectly great), but the Pro version brings a lot of money. https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq
        • dpark 9y ago
          I’m not familiar with Sidekiq. Am I correct in assuming that the “pro” version includes functionality that is not open sourced? If so, this is an example of proprietary code supporting the author with open source providing the free foundation.
          • mperham 9y ago
            waves https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sidekiq https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sidekiq
            • dpark 9y ago
              So a great example of how asking devs to pay for OSS is not very profitable. :) It’s essentially asking for donations.
              • mperham 9y ago
                Yeah, something like RedHat does make lots of money off pure OSS because they sell huge support agreements to large orgs. It's harder/impossible to get smaller businesses to pay for smaller things like tools without holding back functionality. It's all about incentives. If you are selling support, you are incented to give poor support and documentation to your free users. If you are selling functionality, you are incented to give good support to everyone with the understanding that they need to upgrade if they want that functionality. I think the open core model makes for a happier, healthier community in general. The line in the sand where the user needs to pay is very clear and no one is treated poorly.
    • pjmlp 9y ago
      Of course I can, problem is getting developers that only want free beer to actually pay.
    • makapuf 9y ago
      It depends of your definition of can is. Of course you're allowed to do so. But for a desktop app with few moving parts (unlike an OS or complex enterprise software) there's few need of support or customisation. What business models do you have left ? (Apart from being paid for education by example) ? So if you cannot financially support it long term you effectively cannot charge it. There are few exceptions and they often rely of the capability to build but I think it's a net positive since the good ideas (multiple cursors done right) can be implemented in other editors.
  • sundvor 9y ago
    Yep! And as I use these quality tools to earn my own paycheck, it is certainly worth giving a tiny fraction of that to the developers both in gratitude and to ensure more is coming.
  • simias 9y ago
    I don't understand this reply, I'm not advocating pirating Sublime Text, I'm just pointing out that alternatives exist. It's not even a money problem (I've donated to support open source projects in the past) it's just that I consider my editor an extremely important tool that I've invested a lot of time learning and customizing. I've been using emacs as my main editor for about 15 years now and I can't really imagine working without it. And I don't have to, because being open source I know that it's not going to go away no matter what happens. Your "think of the children" argument is frankly dishonest and completely besides the point. You make it sound like using open source software causes developers and their children to starve. Am I a bad person for running Linux too? Think of all these Windows devs who have to care for their sick spouses and children. That's ridiculous.
    • pjmlp 9y ago
      Good that you donate then. As for running Linux, I don't known, it depends. I was an active subscriber for Linux Journal between 1996 until 2004, now I am subscribing again, even though I spend 90% of my time on Windows. During the early Linux days I have bought several Linux distributions either via Walnut Creek or directly from them. Every time I do a Linux distribution installation at home, I do donate something to the distribution, as if I would actually be buying it. So I do put my wallet where my mouth is. My argument is not dishonest at all, rather from someone that came to realize there is no sustainable money flow to make from selling tools to FOSS developers, and hence why all good tools have switched to the enterprise customers.
• eterm 9y ago
  Closed source projects tend to be more stable. Not in the literal doesn't crash sense, but in the sense that they're less likely to be distracted by flavour-of-the-month features and have a consistent vision of what they want from an editor. I've been using sublime for many years and I've never had to re-learn what I'm doing.
  • awestroke 9y ago
    Could you give an example of a flavour-of-the-month feature in code editors?
  • adrianN 9y ago
    You can reuse your muscle memory from the early seventies if you Emacs or Vim.
  • reificator 9y ago
    Yeah but with something like VS Code you have the best of both worlds. You get corporate backing, they're writing it because they need a decent Microsoft/Azure stack editor available on all platforms. They're getting something out of it and are likely to be working on it for awhile. Plus with such a heavy extension focus they're unlikely to flat out ruin the core editing experience itself. But if they did something out of left field or abandon it entirely, the community can pick it up where it is and run with it.
    • sundvor 9y ago
      Even on a very capable PC Sublime Text still runs circles around Code for raw performance. On one hand I'm glad that Code has copied most of Sublime Text's features as it makes it easier to use code for eg Typescript Dev (the out of the box experience for that is arguably better in Code), but on the other hand it does also feel like they just ripped off ST devs' work.
      • reificator 9y ago
        ... Alright, I'll take the bait. > Even on a very capable PC Sublime Text still runs circles around Code for raw performance. If this were an issue in my day-to-day I wouldn't be recommending it. VS Code performance is fine, even when searching through large logfiles. > on the other hand it does also feel like they just ripped off ST devs' work. Are you comparing the products out of the box, or are you comparing Sublime with ton of extensions installed? When I posted my first comment in this thread, the headline was that ligature support is finally stable. That wasn't even available in an unstable form until several months, maybe a year, after it was in VS Code. VS Code comes with a built-in terminal, Sublime struggles to do this even with extensions. VS Code has VCS support built-in, throw in Git Lens and Sublime plugins don't even come close. Speaking of Git Lens, the Code Lens feature in general is really convenient for a surprising number of things. Chasing references is what it does by default but I really like having a little complexity indicator above functions. VS Code has a builtin debugger with language plugins for all sorts of environments. One interface to learn, rather than jumping between them. VS Code intellisense is far smarter in my experience than you can get in Sublime with any plugins. Bonus is that you get Emmet builtin, but that's available everywhere. And don't forget that VS Code is where the language server protocol comes from, so new languages can support a variety of editors with a single server, often times written with the same codebase that compiles/interprets that language. You can use whatever editor you want, it doesn't bother me. I like Sublime, I've purchased multiple personal licenses and don't regret the investment. But to say that VS Code is just a ripoff of Sublime is unreasonable.
• sundvor 9y ago
  Are you really dissing the tremendous efforts put forward by the Sublime Text developer? Editors such as Visual Studio Code have largely caught up feature wise yet ST still represents something rather unique as a super fast, easily customisable and aesthetically pleasing text editor, with multi selection editing, fuzzy search command lookups and json configs - for a long time it was heads and shoulders above most others. Now others have copied ST's main innovations, but it doesn't change the fact that Skinner got there first. I went from Textpad straight to ST, skipping Eclipse etc as being too slow and ungainly. These days I use Visual Studio 2017 for Resharper and NCrunch, but I've still defined a macro to open for editing in ST when I just want a lot of changes done.
  • solarkraft 9y ago
    Sublime Text is great and I don't really feel bad installing it because I have an enormous trust in the developer, but: It is proprietary, with the usual problems. Though I also have to say that it is so complete that I have never had the wish to extend it.
    • h1d 9y ago
      Maybe try Jetbrain's product and see what you may be missing from stock installs of text editors?
  • simias 9y ago
    >Are you really dissing the tremendous efforts put forward by the Sublime Text developer? I'm sorry if it sounded like I said anything like that, I'm talking solely from the point of view of the user, I have no doubt that a lot of work goes into it. I'm just saying that as a user I really don't see the point of taking the risk of using a closed source tool when high quality open source code editors exist.
• rimliu 9y ago
  Portability is the last thing I care about in my text editor. I've been on the same platform for development for the last 12 years. The same goes for being open source: I am not going to hack the editor anyway.
• Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  If the closed source editor is better for what I'm working on, I will use it. I don't work on NetBSD for example, and MacOS is giving me the best developer user experience of all the platforms I've tried. At the end of the day, practicality trumps idealism.
  • simias 9y ago
    All of my arguments were practical though. I use a few closed source applications when I couldn't find any open source alternative that did the job but code editing is definitely not one of them.
• dpark 9y ago
  > With the wealth of high quality and extremely portable code editors out there... What am I missing? I’d say you’re missing the fact that there aren’t actually that many high quality code editors out there, portable or not. Finding an editor you like is worth a fair bit.
  • didymospl 9y ago
    Notepad++ is definitely an option if you're on Windows and looking for something free(it's GPL-licenced). Feature-wise it's on a par with Sublime but it has slightly less polished UX, e.g. there's no real-time regex highlighting or markdown formatting, at least not out of the box.
    • pjmlp 9y ago
      And it is worth regularly donating some money to their devs.
    • Retra 9y ago
      I use Notepad++ at work and ST3 at home, and there is no way that Notepad++ is feature-wise on par with ST. The sidebar options aren't good, no multi-select, no good way to organize projects, and it chokes on big files. The fact that I have to click through 30 modal dialogs every time all my open files have to 'refresh' after a network hiccup is enough of a reason to curse at Notepad++.
• lowleveldesign 9y ago
  Well, I can tell you few reasons why I am still using (and will use) Sublime: - it is way faster to start than, for example, Visual Studio Code and I just prefer it for quick edits (at the same time it is easier to configure than gVim/Emacs and has modern UI) - I like the way multi-select works in general and in the vintage mode specifically (I'm very productive with it) - I use it heavily when I need to analyze source code - the indexer is fast and allows me to quickly jumps between symbols and files It does not mean I use Sublime solely. When I need to develop some code in Python/PowerShell/Go/C#/... I switch to Visual Studio Code, where I have all the necessary plugins and debuggers. About a year ago, I turned to Sublime from gVim (which I have used for more than three years) and never looked back.
• Derbasti 9y ago
  Wow, you are getting downvoted. I 100% agree with you, though. I have seen too many proprietary text editors come and go to be able to justify building my work around a closed-source one. My text editor is absolutely fundamental to all my work, and I spend significant effort in customizing it to my particular needs. I loathe the idea of having to re-do all this work on a different editor, once my current one is no longer supported. But who am I kidding, I am married to Emacs anyway.