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How much would you be willing to pay and how much do you think it'd take? The sublime text package manager has been installed 1.1 million times. Lets assume 10%

How much would you be willing to pay and how much do you think it'd take? The sublime text package manager has been installed 1.1 million times. Lets assume 10% of those are to a unique paid user at $60. That's $6 million right there. Sublime Text's popularity is only rising and if not a single update were released can expect good sales for several years. What do you think the odds are that Sublime Text sells a million licenses in the next 5 years? I think the equation solves itself from here.

edanm 14y ago
I'd probably be willing to pay at least $200, especially if it's spread out over some milestones. For example, I'd rather pay more after I see that people are actually actively working on it after it becomes open source. In fact, spread out over reasonable milestones I can imagine spending far more. Of course, I'm probably an outlier here. I think your assumption of 1.1 million installs belonging to 10% users is way off. Many people probably never purchase ST, but still install the Package Manager, especially since ST remains basically usable without paying. I'd think it's closer to 1%. Of course, that still leaves us with quite a lot of money. To be honest, I hadn't looked at the figure of how many installs the package manager had - I'm pretty surprised (and happy) that ST is this popular. Guess I'll have to keep dreaming.
- 3amOpsGuy 14y ago
  I still can't see how on purely financial terms, open sourcing ST becomes a better outcome than keeping it closed source. The open source avenue (awesome as it would be) is effectively stopping any future income for releases. That means finding an alternative business model for the developer to sustain himself. Sounds like a lot of risk and hassle, if i were the developer, why should i expose myself to that? The flip side is, for long term adoption, it pretty much has to open source itself.
  - pretoriusB 14y ago
    >The flip side is, for long term adoption, it pretty much has to open source itself. Really? I don't see IntelliJ Idea suffering much from NOT being Open Source. Or even TextMate for that matter, which still has friends even while being mediocre at launch and 7 years late to show any improvement. >TextMate was suffering from not being open sourced, and hadn't shown any improvement in 7 years. So he open sourced it, and it is now actively developed by the community. I follow the repo but I don't see any exciting action. Maybe in a few more years (which is my definition of stagnating). >IntelliJ CE has been open source for quite some time now. Yes, but that's just a gimmick. All the interesting stuff is in the commercial edition, and it's not like IDEA is managed like an Open Source project, it's just released as one (like Oracle's MySQL).
    - mnutt 14y ago
      TextMate was suffering from not being open sourced, and hadn't shown any improvement in 7 years. So he open sourced it, and it is now actively developed by the community.
      - bsg75 14y ago
        TextMate was suffering from a lack of development. Someone else took over development, in this case the community. Had TM continued in its previous, active commercial mode, it may be ever more popular today, not having given alternatives a chance to in turn become popular.
    - mdellabitta 14y ago
      IntelliJ CE has been open source for quite some time now.
    - jlmendezbonini 14y ago
      bpierre wrote above: "This is no longer true since Textmate 2 has been open sourced. Textmate 2 is now very active, it is common to see a release every few days. See the changelog [1], or the activity of Allan Odgaard on GitHub [2]. [1] https://github.com/textmate/textmate/blob/master/Application.. https://github.com/textmate/textmate/blob/master/Application.... [2] https://github.com/sorbits?tab=activity https://github.com/sorbits?tab=activity
- georgemcbay 14y ago
  I must have installed the package manager a good 10 times across all the installs and different platforms I used to use ST2 on and I only paid for ST once. I'm probably an outlier in that I work on lots of different systems, but I wouldn't be surprised if the 1.1 million package manager installs represents far less than 1.1 million uniques, and that's before you start adjusting down for pirates and non-paying users who just live with the nag dialog.

edanm 14y ago

I'd probably be willing to pay at least $200, especially if it's spread out over some milestones. For example, I'd rather pay more after I see that people are actually actively working on it after it becomes open source. In fact, spread out over reasonable milestones I can imagine spending far more. Of course, I'm probably an outlier here. I think your assumption of 1.1 million installs belonging to 10% users is way off. Many people probably never purchase ST, but still install the Package Manager, especially since ST remains basically usable without paying. I'd think it's closer to 1%. Of course, that still leaves us with quite a lot of money. To be honest, I hadn't looked at the figure of how many installs the package manager had - I'm pretty surprised (and happy) that ST is this popular. Guess I'll have to keep dreaming.

3amOpsGuy 14y ago
I still can't see how on purely financial terms, open sourcing ST becomes a better outcome than keeping it closed source. The open source avenue (awesome as it would be) is effectively stopping any future income for releases. That means finding an alternative business model for the developer to sustain himself. Sounds like a lot of risk and hassle, if i were the developer, why should i expose myself to that? The flip side is, for long term adoption, it pretty much has to open source itself.
- pretoriusB 14y ago
  >The flip side is, for long term adoption, it pretty much has to open source itself. Really? I don't see IntelliJ Idea suffering much from NOT being Open Source. Or even TextMate for that matter, which still has friends even while being mediocre at launch and 7 years late to show any improvement. >TextMate was suffering from not being open sourced, and hadn't shown any improvement in 7 years. So he open sourced it, and it is now actively developed by the community. I follow the repo but I don't see any exciting action. Maybe in a few more years (which is my definition of stagnating). >IntelliJ CE has been open source for quite some time now. Yes, but that's just a gimmick. All the interesting stuff is in the commercial edition, and it's not like IDEA is managed like an Open Source project, it's just released as one (like Oracle's MySQL).
  - mnutt 14y ago
    TextMate was suffering from not being open sourced, and hadn't shown any improvement in 7 years. So he open sourced it, and it is now actively developed by the community.
    - bsg75 14y ago
      TextMate was suffering from a lack of development. Someone else took over development, in this case the community. Had TM continued in its previous, active commercial mode, it may be ever more popular today, not having given alternatives a chance to in turn become popular.
  - mdellabitta 14y ago
    IntelliJ CE has been open source for quite some time now.
  - jlmendezbonini 14y ago
    bpierre wrote above: "This is no longer true since Textmate 2 has been open sourced. Textmate 2 is now very active, it is common to see a release every few days. See the changelog [1], or the activity of Allan Odgaard on GitHub [2]. [1] https://github.com/textmate/textmate/blob/master/Application.. https://github.com/textmate/textmate/blob/master/Application.... [2] https://github.com/sorbits?tab=activity https://github.com/sorbits?tab=activity
georgemcbay 14y ago
I must have installed the package manager a good 10 times across all the installs and different platforms I used to use ST2 on and I only paid for ST once. I'm probably an outlier in that I work on lots of different systems, but I wouldn't be surprised if the 1.1 million package manager installs represents far less than 1.1 million uniques, and that's before you start adjusting down for pirates and non-paying users who just live with the nag dialog.