Sublime Forum

After recent update I see LICENSE UPGRADE REQUIRED

#170

To start, I would have happily paid for a new license if Sublime had been upfront about the nature of the upgrade. As it is, I was just getting minimalist “Update available” dialogs when I started every day. But I use Sublime Text in Linux, so I don’t go to the website and download a new version. I go to my package manager and tell it do update. I open a terminal and type “dnf update” and sublime_text is just a line item in a long list of available updates. It is absolutely not obvious that this update is to a new major version which obligates me to pay.

Ugh! Now I need to downgrade to a previous version. If I was using Windows, I could pretty simply uninstall and go download the previous version. I’m sure there is a way to tell my package manager to downgrade the installed version, but I have never done that before, so now I need to figure that out. And then I need to configure it to stop flagging updates for this repo. It’s a bother. I should not have to take positive action to keep myself from buying something that I never agreed to buy.

Hear this: IF A NEW VERSION HAS NEW LICENSE TERMS THEN MAKE A NEW REPO! Not doing so, even if not explicitly shady, has the strong appearance of being shady. And it seriously undermines my trust in this company to deal honestly with me in the future.

I have been a happy, paying Sublime Text customer for years. Now I am talking with colleagues about which editors they use and why they like them. This is what happens when a company betrays trust.

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#171

It is a bold claim. Do you have any proof about this?

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#172

Sublime Text has always been an unlimited trial. People using ST either pay for a license or simply run as I stated before.

They do have a blog post page in the site informing about the update. If you refer to the program not telling you, then that is pretty normal behavior for programs on desktop computers. See Mozilla Firefox for example. You get an update prompt and download it if you wish so.

The same thing I wrote to @st.gothian.

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#173

So?

And, it’s not “pretty normal behavior,” at least in the circumstance that I described. If updates to commercial products for Linux make major changes to the terms of use, then the package gets a new name or is put in a new repository. That way, users don’t subject themselves to new terms by simply executing a pedestrian system update. That’s “pretty normal behavior” on Linux.

It’s not, “When you update, you need to pay a license fee,” it’s, “Now that you’ve updated, you need to pay a license fee.” That’s what has people so riled. There are industry-standard best practices for this kind of thing, and this situation fell well short of the mark.

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#174

Technically, you don’t need to pay license to use or update sublime text, though.

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#175

I will go out on a limb and speculate that the people upset about this are not the same people who don’t care about software licenses.

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#176

I am convinced that you people are simply overreacting and looking a a scapegoat for your problems. Instead of finding a solution, you focus only on placing the blame on either Sublime Text or SublimeHQ for the wrong reasons. Maybe you are having a bad day, maybe you simply hate any kind of change. It does not solve your problem playing the blame game.

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#177

I’m not sure that you think that there are right reasons. Here it is: SublimeHQ rolled out an upgrade in a way that made it look like an update. Users are quite reasonably upset about this and are complaining loudly enough that maybe they will do the right thing next time. That’s “finding a solution.”

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#178

Don’t feed the troll …

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#179

Mozilla does the same with Firefox and Microsoft with Edge as well. Its pretty common and accepted in desktop. Nothing shady or nefarious about it. If SublimeHQ wanted your money, they would have already shut down downloads for earlier versions and forced users to actually pay a license to keep using Sublime Text. They didn’t. You are just overreacting and frankly reaching here.

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#180

No. They do not. The comparison is something of a non sequitur.

I never said that they did, so I am not sure who you are responding to with this. What I did say was the SublimeHQ made major changes to their software and particularly its licensing. Many users expect to be clearly warned when they are about to do a major upgrade. And there are pretty “common and accepted” ways to do this, which differ from platform to platform, but were not followed in this case.

You don’t seem concerned about the licensing issue…

But to some of us valid licensing is a big deal. SublimeHQ tells me that payment is required, but bitsper2nd tells me I don’t need to pay. Who should I believe?

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#181

they do. that is how it works on Windows. The OS most people use around world on the desktop.

No logical fallacy here. Its common practice to update desktop programs like that.

Most users don’t care about that. They accept updates willingly.

Read my comment on that again. This time slowly.

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#182

That’s fine and it was also fine for previous ST3 point updates. What’s not fine is showing a modal update dialog that looks exactly like previous point updates but actually upgrades the program to a version which is incompatible with the previously purchased license. Moreover, the upgraded version requires the purchase of a new license for continued use (as clearly stated on the download page).

Due to this deceptive behavior users cannot make informed decisions. As there was no action taken from the Sublime HQ team in response to the many people reporting this, one can only assume that this is very much intentional. Otherwise they would have disabled the update check by now to avoid misleading their customers. I am also very skeptical to the argument that this was an oversight. For the first major upgrade in years, the upgrade path of existing customers must have been clearly defined.

FWIW, personally I decided that the Sublime HQ team cannot be trusted anymore. Who knows what the next update will bring. This time we were lucky that many (not all) were able to downgrade to ST3 without issues. Next time they might break the configuration so no downgrade is possible anymore or change the license at will. It’s a good time to explore alternatives that actually respect their users/ customers.

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#183

read my reply on this. Also this one. And finally this one.

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#184

What about them? None of them address the fact that the Sublime HQ team could resolve the issue by disabling the update check but seemingly decided that they rather want to continue deceiving their existing customers.

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#185

Nobody is deceiving you. You can update and downgrade ST optionally.

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#186

Seriously why is he still here? If he doesn’t work for Sublime, does he have nothing better to do?

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#187

I like to share the things I enjoy about ST too. Made thread about Themes and Color Schemes. Feel free to have look or recommend anything.

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#188

Firefox and Edge do now do auto-updates, but neither have ever auto-updated their app, then splashed a license alert at me—but oh, I can go to their site and downgrade to their previous version to keep using their previous version. It’s a non sequitur. Guaranteed if they change their license terms to include or adjust pricing, we’re gonna see it prior to the install.

Sorry for the incorrect reply, @Gatontillica

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#189

So we have gone for the “nuclear option” … moved one of our projects to atom:
atom.io
A reasonably painless transition. And for those of us used to Sublime’s Monokai theme (like me) there’s an identical theme for atom as well (“atom-sublime-monokai”).
We do (mostly) open source, atom is open source. Logical move.

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