Jon what is the future of Sublime Text?

[facelessuser]

Anyone who has been with Sublime Text for an extended length of time, knows how much code Jon can actually push out…by himself. Supposedly he has/had two additional people, but all new features and fixes seem to be drying up. Long periods of times with no new features or fixes occur, and then when a new version pops up, the kind of fixes we see are what he used to push out in a day.

I am not sure if there are things going on with Jon, or if everything is fine, or maybe we underestimate how much effort had to go into some of these small updates. Maybe he has a second job because Sublime isn’t paying enough…I don’t know. But as someone who has been using sublime for a while, it seems like something is up.

I don’t need to know Jon’s personal life details. I really just want to know: is development slowing down indefinitely, for a span of time, or not at all because there is a ton of work going on with a separate branch we just aren’t seeing. I have seen programs come and go and die. If Sublime is dying, then I need to start looking for an editor that isn’t dying. I am okay with Sublime development slowing down, but slowing down without a heads up makes someone who has invested time writing plugins and money a little worried that…maybe it is dying. Not panicking, just a little worried. Even if Sublime died tomorrow, the editor is still usable for quite a while, but I would start looking around for future. If I am going to invest a lot of time creating a workflow around an editor, I want to know it is going to be supported longer than a year.

I don’t think people are being nosy. And Jon has, for as long as I have been on the forums, never been extremely vocal, but it seems like he is even less vocal now. And there is an obvious extreme slow down on new releases.

[jbrooksuk]

I’ve been a member — although I was lurking for a while — of this forum since Apr 11, 2010, written a few plugins, provided support for other users and spent a lot of time investing in Sublime.

Like facelessuser said, Jon is able to pump out an insane amount of code very quickly. Sublime developer has been slow, fast, slow, rapid and now, almost dead. I trust Jon, but I’m still worried for him.

[Arjan]

Jon is able to pump out an insane amount of code very quickly. Sublime developer has been slow, fast, slow, rapid and now, almost dead. I trust Jon, but I’m still worried for him.

How do you know it’s an insane amount of code when it’s closed source? Looking at the release log the past year doesn’t exactly impress me productivity-wise.

That aside, ST3 is a promising editor, but with bugs that are not adressed and there’s basically a communication blackout. So jon, answer the OP - what the heck is going on with this commercial product that I purchased?

Should I invest more time in writing plugins and scripts? I’m very close to go back to vim (dark ages, yeah, but at least we know what it is and where it’s going…)

[kernelpanic]

I have been SublimeText user for 1.5 years now. But this is my first post. I registered just to be able to reply to this topic.
I bought ST because I use it on daily basis and I just can’t imagine my development workflow without it.
Everyone can speculate about the fact what jsp has been up to lately, whether he’s too busy with some other work, on vacation in Zimbabwe or just visiting his grandma.
And I can respect the fact that he has his personal life. We all do!

But the fact of the matter is:
As soon as you take someone’s money they expect support and some kind of service for their money.
Some questions might be as simple as “how do I …?” or more complicated ones such as bug reports/urgent fixes and other issues we have no control over. But not all of them can be resolved when the main guy has taken a leave of absence. Maybe he really should think of hiring someone to support his business or people may start jumping the ship.

Something like this has already happened to Textmate a few years ago, when Allan Odgaard (dev of textmate) has been feeding promises to his customers for a very long time with TM2. When finally he failed to deliver on these promises and textmate went abandonware. That, and lack of ahem communication killed TM as we knew it. Recently TM had resurfaced again, open source driven in an effort to save itself, but in my opinion it is nowhere close to what ST allows you to do.

I would pay for ST3 full price again if I have to, but I would really hate to see it fade away.

Bottom line is … what do I want? – Just some sort of more frequent communication from our common friend from Down Under. Thats it. We all need to be reassured that our beloved Sublime Text isn’t going anywhere.

[Arjan]

[quote=“somedude”]I don’t know about the future of Sublime Text, but I’m pretty sure the future of this thread is being just another rant circlejerk without any reply from Jon, with lots of pissed off and complacent customers writing walls of text and, of course, Arjan being mad at everything and everybody.

I love this forum. <3[/quote]

Amusingly, all the entries in this thread so far were relevant, until yours came along.

[MKANET]

I recently purchased Sublime Text for $70. I don’t get it… Several of my questions go unanswered here… what makes it even worse, there’s no email notifications if I do get a reply on a forum thread. Who does that for a commercial product? If Sublime Text cant maintain it’s business, they really should consider just making this just an open source project.

I was so desperate in getting one of my questions answered, I ended up emailing the sales email address asking for a developer to please help me with the issue using ST3… I just got an automated email response saying they’re on annual leave until Nov. 19th.

Change the BG Color of the Build Panel (new ST2 Build 2165)

Hey everyone I just installed the newest ST2 build, and it changed the background color of the Build panel to this: [image] The new color is quite annoying combined with my current color scheme (Monokai); the panel's background color is just very distracting since I build the documents every minute or two. I just wanted to ask if there is a possibility to change the background color? Thanks in advance. Cheers

I even tried posting on the “Technical Support” forum".

[lmedinas]

[quote=“bizoo”]

I think a lot of us would like to hear directly from Jon on this.

Count me in…

It’s beyond me how bug reports could be completely ignored.
eg, this bug:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11645&start=0
was silently ignored for more than 7 months, and the fix is only 1 line to add in a source file !!!

Maybe I’m wrong in this bug report, but I think that I deserve at least an answer.

People take their times to report bugs for nothing, no fixes, no thanks, nothing…

This forum work only on the community shoulders, a few great people that try to help others and create great plugins.
Without this community, ST lose half it’s value.
So a [size=150]big [/size][size=200]thanks[/size] to these people.

I am increasingly disappointed and frustrated by how ST development and communication works.
Hope something will change soon.[/quote]

ST was the only editor software i ever bought because i felt it worth the money for it but i share the same opinion.
If ST was opensource there was no complain to be made but since we paid the license we expect professional support! Look at ST2 users (like me also) who expect their stable product to have bug fixes.
I’m sure Jon see these threads and i’m sure he has enough time to reply, so there is no excuse for not supporting or inform users like other company’s do.

EDIT: Meanwhile i hate to say but i’m looking again to Emacs and this as teached me a lesson to not putting too much hope on an closed source project.
So maybe it’s time to follow what TextMate did and opensource ST, this would turn ST in one of the best projects out there with the this small community as a background.

PS: I’m only expressing my opinion, not creating a flame war or something so please take this comment as my personal opinion.

[Nova]

I usually follow daily Sublime Text, and I seldom post on the forum.
Anyhow, I mainly agree with other people herein: an “official reply” from jps on this topic would be nice, and would probably “calm tempers” of may paying customers’ threads like this one. With “official reply” I mean something simple, as a sentence like “don’t worry, I’m still alive, and ST will go on”.

Nevertheless, jps never replied to this kind of threads (he replied to other three threads today, but not this one): I beleive that he doesn’t want to enter into this kind of discussion; it’s a questionable choice, but this is what I can see.

Personally, I beleive (and I hope) that ST development will go on: I don’t think that jps would hire two people, and let ST abandonware. My hope is due to the fact that I think (and I’m not alone) that ST is the best editor out there (well, ST plus the plugins, to be fair), and -believe me or not- I’ve tried many editors over the years.
For us, trying to evaluate or assess the status of the development from the activity on the forum, or from the “official” changelog is at least objectionable.

[jbjornson]

The last time Jon actually responded to one of these threads was in January just before the initial SublimeText 3 release:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10738&start=20#p42243

[quote=“jps”]…
I have no intention of posting every week just to say ‘still working on it’.
That being said, there will be something fun in the near future.[/quote]

I assume that he has a similar approach now, which is basically: “I’ll let you know when something is ready but I’m not going to update you on my progress or talk about what I’m working on”. I’m not saying I agree with this approach by Jon, but at least he is consistent with his communication style (or there lack of).

[Jibz]

This company has a very different approach to releases and support than most people expect it seems.

I just hope we won’t get another final with no changes and a ST4 beta paid upgrade in a month.

[wbond]

[quote=“Jibz”]This company has a very different approach to releases and support than most people expect it seems.

I just hope we won’t get another final with no changes and a ST4 beta paid upgrade in a month.[/quote]

I have no connection with Jon other than contributing to the community. The reason that ST3 came around so quickly was because there were some fundamental issues that had to be addressed that would break backwards compatibility. Two of these were:

1. Moving the API to Python 3. The version of Python 2 that Sublime Text X (later renamed to Sublime Text 2) used has been end-of-lifed. There will be no new security releases and feature development stopped a long time ago. Also, Sublime Text 2 used the version of Python bundled with OS X, which was 2.6. With Sublime Text 3 Jon was able to refactor the plugin system to use the plugin_host(.exe) for plugins to isolate the core editor so plugins would not tarnish the stability of the core editor. Also, Python 3 is not backward compatible with Python 2, but has a bright future ahead of it. He waited until Python 3.3 came out, which has better compatibility with Python 2 than 3.0-3.2 had.

2. Moving the code base to C++ 11. I’m no expert in this, but from what I understand he did quite a bit of work on the internals of Sublime Text, using new features in C++ 11. Doing this means that OS X 10.6 is no longer supported.

Rather than gimping the forward movement movement of Sublime Text, it seems to me he made a tough decision to release a new version that broke backwards compatibility, but provided for a healthy future. As a community we should be happy that he didn’t just let it languish for years like Textmate did.

As someone who’s written quite a bit of plugin code, it was/is a pain to support multiple versions and deal with writing Python that works on 2.6 and 3.3, but I’d rather that than be stuck in a codebase from 4 years ago.

[peekingin]

Hi, I’m new to Sublime Text. I’m finding it very useful so far. I use it a lot for work (on OSX), and I’ve been planning on purchasing a license. However, I chanced to stop in at this forum, and this thread and the “Safe to buy?” thread have me wondering if the license is a smart purchase.

Continued development isn’t such a big deal, but support is, and I’d be paying for the license on the assumption that issues are being addressed as they arise. However, on development, there’s all this chat about a fourth version and no indication when that might happen. It makes sense to hold out for the phantom ST4.

In any case, given that there’s no time limit on the evaluation period, it’s hard to fault the developer. (That is if there’s no restrictions on the freeware vs. paid versions.) However, he is (or they are) definitely leaving money on the table, as I’d gladly pay for a license if I knew that the software was actively supported. If anyone is especially close with the development team and has real updates on support and ST4, I hope they’ll chime in. Nobody wants to pay for a license on abandonware.

[guillermooo]

I don’t speak on behalf of anybody, but:

ST3 is still in beta. It’s a bit premature to start talking about ST4.

Also, note that you have to buy a license to make continued use of the software, not simply to receive support.

[peekingin]

[quote=“guillermooo”]
Also, note that you have to buy a license to make continued use of the software, not simply to receive support.[/quote]

Well, there’s no cap to the evaluation period, and I suspect the developer may have done that knowing development would be an on/off affair. Or maybe knowing that ST was a dead-end for him/them?

As for what I “have to” do, I’ve been using it for a week. I consider my participation in this thread part of that evaluation. If it turns out it’s been effectively abandoned, I’d rather cut my losses (even though I really like ST3) and go with a fully-featured editor that will receive support/updates. I don’t want to be stuck holding the bag.

[guillermooo]

I simply paraphrased what the Sales FAQ says. I’m not implying anything about your use of ST.

If it helps, I’ve been using ST happily since 2009.In the beginning, releases happened weekly or even daily. After a few years and a more mature project to develop, it’s only natural that the pace slowed down. And in spite of the sparse communication from Sublime Hq other than related to reported issues, versions keep being released.

No amount of reassurance from anybody will help predict the future, though.

[peekingin]

[quote=“guillermooo”]I simply paraphrased what the Sales FAQ says. I’m not implying anything about your use of ST.

If it helps, I’ve been using ST happily since 2009.In the beginning, releases happened weekly or even daily. After a few years and a more mature project to develop, it’s only natural that the pace slowed down. And in spite of the sparse communication from Sublime Hq other than related to reported issues, versions keep being released.

No amount of reassurance from anybody will help predict the future, though.[/quote]

Thanks, I appreciate your responses. I realize that given the nature of how the developer handles himself, there’s no guarantees. That’s unfortunate, though, as it doesn’t have to be that way. I’m not suggesting he start a Twitter account and provide instantaneous feedback, but I don’t see what’s so difficult with weekly or at least monthly updates. Especially when there’s potential customers involved.

Thanks again.

[Jibz]

Just to clarify, my mention of a hypothetical ST4 was merely a comment on how this discussion feels a bit like my memory of the year between 2.0.1 and 2.0.2 (which brought the ST3 announcement).

As someone who’s written quite a bit of plugin code, it was/is a pain to support multiple versions and deal with writing Python that works on 2.6 and 3.3, but I’d rather that than be stuck in a codebase from 4 years ago.

I agree, and I am glad you and other plugin developers have followed. I think the work of the plugin developers is part of the reason ST has been as successful as it has.

[Arjan]

I’m not suggesting he start a Twitter account and provide instantaneous feedback…

He is waaaay ahead of you: twitter.com/sublimehq

It’s unfortunately just another channel he doesn’t respond too.

What an ignorant company.

[peekingin]

[quote=“Arjan”]
What an ignorant company.[/quote]

Frustration does not excuse insults. Why would you do that? ST is a quality product, they’re clearly capable.

I get the feeling that ST will continue to grow and receive support, but this is definitely the kind of thing I shouldn’t have to rely on a “feeling” for. The dev/company’s community involvement (i.e. support and dev updates) should be more than the occasional “look out, nightly dropping soon” updates. That kind of attitude is common on open source/freeware projects, so I understand where’s it coming from. In those situations, the lack of communication is justified with, “Hey, I only have so much time to volunteer, would you rather I spent it writing email/tweeting or coding?” Adopting those attitudes for licensed software is inappropriate.

I hope the dev/company comes around on this, as it’s really good software from what I’ve used of it. The Goto Anything is so slick.

[Arjan]

I get the feeling that ST will continue to grow and receive support

That probably explain why I have no answers on my support request mails and why there are 1000’s of unanswered posts on this forum.