4 ms·

After recent update I see License Upgrade Required (2021)

51 points by harles 5y ago

spamizbad 5y ago
Sounds like this isn't related to the update but instead related to the license model retroactively changing to only last 3 years? Anyway, I left Sublime Text for Doom Emacs at the start of the pandemic and couldn't be happier.
- melling 5y ago
  I haven’t used Emacs in about 5 years. Had to look up Doom Emacs. It looks nice. https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs
postpawl 5y ago
Why post this now? This happened almost a year ago. Developers are expensive these days, and I understand needing to fund development. Edit: Added back "Why post this now?"
- jeppesen-io 5y ago
  Outrage gets clicks EDIT: responding to pre-edit of parent
- harles 5y ago
  Because it’s still an issue. Dev alludes to a fix, but the update pop up still persists. Seems like it’s either low priority or working as intended. The issue isn’t the cost. I’ve gotten my value out of Sublime Text and would happily pay more. The issue is that the update is pushed on users with no indication that it will then require payment.
  - postpawl 5y ago
    "The issue is that the update is pushed on users with no indication that it will then require payment." Yeah, that's a valid complaint. The v4 upgrade probably should have been more explicit about that.
- rafale 5y ago
  VS Code is free... Heck, even VS Community is free. A text editor is not a business model anymore.
  - postpawl 5y ago
    Sublime still works pretty well. It's very fast. I've tried VS Code and ended up going back to Sublime. That's a personal preference though, and I can totally understand using VS Code instead.
  - DethNinja 5y ago
    Sublime is still miles ahead of VS Code. Text editors are definitely a business model, I’ve yet to find a better alternative to Sublime and it is a critical piece of software for my workflow.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
[May, 2021]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Zaheer 5y ago
I used to use Sublime heavily but VSCode is just as good or better for nearly everything. Performance is the only area Sublime still wins. Even then, for 99% of what I imagine most people do, the performance is just fine. The only time I use Sublime now is if I have to open a ridiculously large file.
- sho 5y ago
  > Performance is the only area Sublime still wins You say this like that's some minor detail. It doesn't just "win", Sublime absolutely wipes the floor with VS Code, and for my development style at least, I feel that every minute of every hour of every day. I do like the look of VS Code but unless they can improve its performance such that I don't feel like I'm using a 286, I'll continue with Sublime as my main editor.
saagarjha 5y ago
Disclaimer: happy Sublime Text 3 and 4 customer. I don’t really see the problem here? Like, ok, maybe you can be a bit upset that the app now asks you to upgrade, perhaps they should have used a less permanent reminder about that. But you can literally download every version of Sublime Text ever from the website, so if you don’t like the latest one with that you can just go back a version?
- blondin 5y ago
  what a ridiculous take on the issue. if we want integrity and fairness in our field we need to apply it everywhere. giving passes isn't going to get us anywhere. the issue at stake is the use of dark patterns.
- harles 5y ago
  The key issue is that the upgrade is essentially forced with no indication that it’s a major version upgrade or will invalidate the license. Going back to previous versions is a possibility but will require either permanently disabling updates or dealing with deceptive update pop ups. It’s also not obvious this is an option.
  - jay_kyburz 5y ago
    This is why I've made an effort to move away from Sublime. It's not so much the money, but this was just a real dark pattern and it made me question the integrity of the developers. Kate is really great these days. And then ZeroBrane for Lua and Rider for C#.
- guitarbill 5y ago
  I waited to upgrade to v4, which I've done now, and I'm still a happy ST user even though I had to pay. The upgrade dialog (in v3) nagged incessantly, and frequently. It produced a dialog on macOS eating keyboard input, and was really annoying. It wasn't obvious how to turn it off. And it could be more honest about requiring a license upgrade up front. So all of that wasn't the best thing ever.
  - 5y ago
bunkydoo 5y ago
hashtagjohnt 5y ago
I can definitely see why people are upset by this. That said people (who use sublime as their main text editor) not purchasing sublime licenses is funny to me. It’s such a critical piece to your day to day work (as a dev at least) that I am surprised more people aren’t happy to support a great text editor. Because people are so hesitant to paying for a license, it has become one of my go-to gifts to friends and co-workers who use sumblime but haven’t purchased a license yet.
- chii 5y ago
  I would expect that a workplace could pay this license out of the "petty" fund. It's a pretty good editor, all things considered, even tho it is somewhat "outclassed" by VSCode imho - but if you don't need that level of IDE-esque capability, sublime is great. I use it to analyze multi-gig log files and it opens it without a hitch!
  - Lamad123 5y ago
    VSCode freezes with large files... Sublime never does!
    - alphabettsy 5y ago
      Exactly this.
robomartin 5y ago
This just reminded me to uninstall Sublime Text 3 (paid license). I haven't used it in a very long time. Happy paying JetBrains annually for their tools. Not doing this out of spite for the ST4 licensing nag --even though I didn't like it. By doing this they made me think whether or not I needed their product enough to pay for it again. The decision was clearly "no". I'm posting this just as a note/through that might be useful to other software providers. Sometimes you force customers to re-evaluate if continuing to pay for your tools is worth their money. I had a similar experience with Altium Designer this year. They sent me repeated emails as the $2000 annual maintenance fee due date approached. With this they forced me to take another look at KiCAD --something I had been looking at-- and realized it easily covers 95% or more of the designs we are doing. Paying for multiple AD licenses, in this context, makes no sense. We still get to use the last 2021 version and get to switch to KiCAD this year. And, yes, we will be donating to the KiCAD project on an annual basis. I believe in paying for good software when you want quality and continuing development (JetBrains being another example of this). Now I am on the hunt for a good alternative for flow/thermal simulation for Solidworks. Anyone have any suggestions? It doesn't have to be free, just not the cost of a small car and lock you into ridiculous annual maintenance fees. We have FloWorks, which dates back a few years, and works fine. If we can upgrade to a better tool for a reasonable per-seat license I'd go for it.
ben-schaaf 5y ago
The new update dialog that includes version numbers and a notice for when your license is not valid for a new version has shipped since the 26th of October in build 4121. If customers wish to stay on Sublime Text 3 we have documentation on that here: https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/previous_versions.html https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/previous_versions.html including a setting for disabling the update dialog.
- ahaferburg 5y ago
  Wait. 4121? Wouldn't this change only affect people already on ST4? So ST3 users are still get the old update dialog?
- harles 5y ago
  Sorry, this is super shady. So this will only help with your new license model if you’ve already upgraded to v4. If a vulnerability is found in v3, will there be a security patch? If so, how will you notify users that you’ve now encouraged to entirely disable updates?
Mandatum 5y ago
It's a dark pattern but I could give a fuck. ST authors, all.. 3 of them these days? Deserve more money than they ask for. I just wish they'd implement VS Code plugin compatibility rather than try to go head-to-head. I realise that would be an obscene amount of engineering, but if anyone can do it.. It's them.
sumrdev 5y ago
I agree with the sentiment of OP, I too was “tricked” into upgrading. Although, I simply removed the new version and reinstalled 3. Then disabled the update popup in the settings: “update_check”: false

51 points by harles 5y ago

Sounds like this isn't related to the update but instead related to the license model retroactively changing to only last 3 years? Anyway, I left Sublime Text for Doom Emacs at the start of the pandemic and couldn't be happier.

melling 5y ago
I haven’t used Emacs in about 5 years. Had to look up Doom Emacs. It looks nice. https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs

postpawl 5y ago

Why post this now? This happened almost a year ago. Developers are expensive these days, and I understand needing to fund development. Edit: Added back "Why post this now?"

jeppesen-io 5y ago
Outrage gets clicks EDIT: responding to pre-edit of parent
harles 5y ago
Because it’s still an issue. Dev alludes to a fix, but the update pop up still persists. Seems like it’s either low priority or working as intended. The issue isn’t the cost. I’ve gotten my value out of Sublime Text and would happily pay more. The issue is that the update is pushed on users with no indication that it will then require payment.
- postpawl 5y ago
  "The issue is that the update is pushed on users with no indication that it will then require payment." Yeah, that's a valid complaint. The v4 upgrade probably should have been more explicit about that.
rafale 5y ago
VS Code is free... Heck, even VS Community is free. A text editor is not a business model anymore.
- postpawl 5y ago
  Sublime still works pretty well. It's very fast. I've tried VS Code and ended up going back to Sublime. That's a personal preference though, and I can totally understand using VS Code instead.
- DethNinja 5y ago
  Sublime is still miles ahead of VS Code. Text editors are definitely a business model, I’ve yet to find a better alternative to Sublime and it is a critical piece of software for my workflow.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

[May, 2021]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Zaheer 5y ago

I used to use Sublime heavily but VSCode is just as good or better for nearly everything. Performance is the only area Sublime still wins. Even then, for 99% of what I imagine most people do, the performance is just fine. The only time I use Sublime now is if I have to open a ridiculously large file.

sho 5y ago
> Performance is the only area Sublime still wins You say this like that's some minor detail. It doesn't just "win", Sublime absolutely wipes the floor with VS Code, and for my development style at least, I feel that every minute of every hour of every day. I do like the look of VS Code but unless they can improve its performance such that I don't feel like I'm using a 286, I'll continue with Sublime as my main editor.

saagarjha 5y ago

Disclaimer: happy Sublime Text 3 and 4 customer. I don’t really see the problem here? Like, ok, maybe you can be a bit upset that the app now asks you to upgrade, perhaps they should have used a less permanent reminder about that. But you can literally download every version of Sublime Text ever from the website, so if you don’t like the latest one with that you can just go back a version?

blondin 5y ago
what a ridiculous take on the issue. if we want integrity and fairness in our field we need to apply it everywhere. giving passes isn't going to get us anywhere. the issue at stake is the use of dark patterns.
harles 5y ago
The key issue is that the upgrade is essentially forced with no indication that it’s a major version upgrade or will invalidate the license. Going back to previous versions is a possibility but will require either permanently disabling updates or dealing with deceptive update pop ups. It’s also not obvious this is an option.
- jay_kyburz 5y ago
  This is why I've made an effort to move away from Sublime. It's not so much the money, but this was just a real dark pattern and it made me question the integrity of the developers. Kate is really great these days. And then ZeroBrane for Lua and Rider for C#.
guitarbill 5y ago
I waited to upgrade to v4, which I've done now, and I'm still a happy ST user even though I had to pay. The upgrade dialog (in v3) nagged incessantly, and frequently. It produced a dialog on macOS eating keyboard input, and was really annoying. It wasn't obvious how to turn it off. And it could be more honest about requiring a license upgrade up front. So all of that wasn't the best thing ever.
- 5y ago

bunkydoo 5y ago

hashtagjohnt 5y ago

I can definitely see why people are upset by this. That said people (who use sublime as their main text editor) not purchasing sublime licenses is funny to me. It’s such a critical piece to your day to day work (as a dev at least) that I am surprised more people aren’t happy to support a great text editor. Because people are so hesitant to paying for a license, it has become one of my go-to gifts to friends and co-workers who use sumblime but haven’t purchased a license yet.

chii 5y ago
I would expect that a workplace could pay this license out of the "petty" fund. It's a pretty good editor, all things considered, even tho it is somewhat "outclassed" by VSCode imho - but if you don't need that level of IDE-esque capability, sublime is great. I use it to analyze multi-gig log files and it opens it without a hitch!
- Lamad123 5y ago
  VSCode freezes with large files... Sublime never does!
  - alphabettsy 5y ago
    Exactly this.

robomartin 5y ago

This just reminded me to uninstall Sublime Text 3 (paid license). I haven't used it in a very long time. Happy paying JetBrains annually for their tools. Not doing this out of spite for the ST4 licensing nag --even though I didn't like it. By doing this they made me think whether or not I needed their product enough to pay for it again. The decision was clearly "no". I'm posting this just as a note/through that might be useful to other software providers. Sometimes you force customers to re-evaluate if continuing to pay for your tools is worth their money. I had a similar experience with Altium Designer this year. They sent me repeated emails as the $2000 annual maintenance fee due date approached. With this they forced me to take another look at KiCAD --something I had been looking at-- and realized it easily covers 95% or more of the designs we are doing. Paying for multiple AD licenses, in this context, makes no sense. We still get to use the last 2021 version and get to switch to KiCAD this year. And, yes, we will be donating to the KiCAD project on an annual basis. I believe in paying for good software when you want quality and continuing development (JetBrains being another example of this). Now I am on the hunt for a good alternative for flow/thermal simulation for Solidworks. Anyone have any suggestions? It doesn't have to be free, just not the cost of a small car and lock you into ridiculous annual maintenance fees. We have FloWorks, which dates back a few years, and works fine. If we can upgrade to a better tool for a reasonable per-seat license I'd go for it.

ben-schaaf 5y ago

The new update dialog that includes version numbers and a notice for when your license is not valid for a new version has shipped since the 26th of October in build 4121. If customers wish to stay on Sublime Text 3 we have documentation on that here: https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/previous_versions.html https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/previous_versions.html including a setting for disabling the update dialog.

ahaferburg 5y ago
Wait. 4121? Wouldn't this change only affect people already on ST4? So ST3 users are still get the old update dialog?
harles 5y ago
Sorry, this is super shady. So this will only help with your new license model if you’ve already upgraded to v4. If a vulnerability is found in v3, will there be a security patch? If so, how will you notify users that you’ve now encouraged to entirely disable updates?

Mandatum 5y ago

It's a dark pattern but I could give a fuck. ST authors, all.. 3 of them these days? Deserve more money than they ask for. I just wish they'd implement VS Code plugin compatibility rather than try to go head-to-head. I realise that would be an obscene amount of engineering, but if anyone can do it.. It's them.

sumrdev 5y ago

I agree with the sentiment of OP, I too was “tricked” into upgrading. Although, I simply removed the new version and reinstalled 3. Then disabled the update popup in the settings: “update_check”: false