Build 4180: LICENSE UPGRADE REQUIRED

[terribleplan]

Hi there. I bought ST4 when it first released, but after updating to the latest version it is says something about needing a license update in the title-bar. How do I fix this?

[TheSecEng]

Well it was released in 2021. So it sounds like you are due for a license upgrade. Since licensing is now valid for 3 years of updates.

[mikerizzi]

However, the Sublime Text website says this
" Expiration Date
Individual licenses are valid for 3 years of updates, but do not expire after 3 years. Only if you wish to use newer versions will an upgrade fee be required."

but no warning was given upon the usual update software notification.

How do I revert back to the previous version so my license continues to work?
This is an urgent request, since I’m leaving town in about 30 hours and need to use Sublime Text ASAP.

Thanks in advance,
mike

[terribleplan]

What? I bought it, just like I bought ST3 before. What do you mean “valid for 3 years”. Since when did ST move to the terrible licensing model of Jetbrains and Adobe?

I guess the real question is how do I stop having it nag me to update and not update via apt-get then?

[bschaaf]

but no warning was given upon the usual update software notification.

The update dialog shows a “LICENSE UPGRADE REQUIRED” warning when prompting you to update.

How do I revert back to the previous version so my license continues to work?

On our download page you can download any version you want, in your case 4169.

[bschaaf]

You can disable update checks using the checkbox in the update dialog. You can also install specific versions using apt install sublime-text=4169.

Note our license model is not the same as Jetbrains and Adobe. A license covers a 3 year update period perpetually - only newer versions of ST are not covered by your license. Additionally we don’t enable the nag popup for anyone who’s ever purchased a license.

This is practically the same as it was before except we don’t need to hold back fixes and new features for the next major version. The alternative would be that all the changes in 4180 get held back and eventually released as part of ST5.

[ericpp]

I got caught off-guard by this as well. I didn’t even notice I needed an upgrade until I happened to glance at the window title.

I must’ve missed the LICENSE UPGRADE REQUIRED text in the update popup and just assumed it was a normal update and clicked on the button without thinking. Perhaps an extra “Are you sure” confirmation popup would help to distinguish it from a normal update? Maybe a “Be sure to upgrade your license” popup after the first launch of the new version would also help?

I’m happy to upgrade my license as I use your software everyday to do my work. It’s priced very reasonably for the amount of value I get out of it.

[stever]

I’m using Debian and it was updated via the package repository, so I can’t really opt-out of update notifications that way.

Really, I’ve been a paying user of Sublime Text forever it seems. It replaced UltraEdit, which I’d used for some time before then. Maybe it was since v2, I can’t remember.

Anyway, the only problem I have with this is the substantial cost. Only saving 20% compared to a new license?! It feels feels really hostile. 40% maybe acceptable. I think it’ll be on this basis that I can’t really justify it every 3 years. I got more mileage out of the last one or two versions for sure.

I don’t really use it for much more than a favourite text editor. I don’t tend to use vscode either, but vscode would make an OK alternative. Fast startup times are good. Maybe I’ll just go to using gVim or something instead.

[terribleplan]

Yeah, I dunno. I guess if 4180 is “ST5” I get it, I mean I upgraded my license from ST3 to ST4. I just don’t like the idea of software that stops working automatically (on apt upgrade) after an arbitrary period of time.

Maybe deb repo isn’t the right distribution method any more and only manual install should be supported to better support this licensing model? Even renaming the package doesn’t really work given different licenses start and expire at different times, though it would work for a hypothetical ST4 vs ST5.

Overall I just feel bad about this whole situation as it took me by surprise and is not how it worked for ST3. That made felt more like what I expected.

ETA: “Stops working” is strong wording, it does work. It doesn’t even nag, it just has “LICENSE UPGRADE REQUIRED” in the title bar.

[ChrisDeath]

What i not really understood is: If the licence is not valid anymore how was it possible to upgrade?
On Linux i see the issue as apt-get does not care about licences, but on Mac and Windows Sublime should actually show the hint in update dialog, that the used licence is not eligible to use the new version. As Sublime is able to show that waterprint on top of the window, it would also be able to do that on update dialog. User may still be able to upgrade then, but with the hint he knows he will have version in place that is not supported anymore and a waterprint is shown.
Anyhow the to-old licence info is quite fair, it is not nice looking but you can still use the program without interruption.

[bschaaf]

On Linux i see the issue as apt-get does not care about licences, but on Mac and Windows Sublime should actually show the hint in update dialog, that the used licence is not eligible to use the new version. As Sublime is able to show that waterprint on top of the window, it would also be able to do that on update dialog.

We’re already doing that. As I said above:

The update dialog shows a “LICENSE UPGRADE REQUIRED” warning when prompting you to update.

[harlekein]

I was already switching to Neovim, even sponsoring the project.

ST4 has been lackluster, terrible with LSP performance and support and now this. It’s the final straw.

I’ve been opening ST4 now and then for multicursor edits. Fortunately that is coming to Neovim as well.

Thanks Sublime. I purchased licenses for both 3 and 4, but this is my goodbye. It could have been the leading IDE if you would have gone open source and went with donations and sponsorhip.

[bschaaf]

It’s unfortunate we haven’t met your expectations, but thanks for supporting us.

It could have been the leading IDE if you would have gone open source and went with donations and sponsorhip.

Going by neovim’s budget, Sublime Text’s development would significantly slow down if we went that route, as almost everyone working for SublimqHQ would have to be let go.

[harlekein]

That would be a shame indeed. Without having insight into your licensing sales and user counts, I don’t really see how Sublime has a future. Especially with the popularity of VS Code, and the onset of Cursor and Zed. Still, best of luck to you.

[Slighting6860]

I am among those disappointed. I bought my original license back in ~2013, and have always used ST3 as my main ‘quick text edit’ editor. So much so that I still call it ST3, even now that it’s ST4.
When ST4 was released back in 2021
I jumped on the chance to upgrade my license and experience all that was new, only to then be mildly whelmed. Since then, I’ve barely seen any changes whatsoever; both when using it as a ‘full IDE’ and for quick text edits it is exactly the same. There have been 4 major updates in the 3 years since.

So color me very surprised when I execute yet another minor update and suddenly my license is invalid.
I would absolutely 100% understand if licenses were tied to major versions. If this new update was actually ‘ST5’ I would accept that and pay for a new license. But at $80 for a license that only lasts 3 years I’d expect a little more. Yeah it’s significantly cheaper than most full IDEs like Jetbrains, but those are massive projects packed with features and intelligence, not a text editor with some plugins.

Very sad to be leaving Sublime behind, but I can’t justify $80 for just a minor maintenance upgrade to a piece of software that can’t keep up with the rest of the industry.

[deathaxe]

Your license is valid for a life-time for all builds released within the 3 years since buying - just to be correct.

So if newer ST release doesn’t add enough value for your workflow / use case, it is perfectly fine to stay on a certain release, until you find a one it justifies an update fee. IMHO current releases (4169-4180) run perfectly fine, with syntax engine and indexer being on very good performance.

You are absolutely right however about majority of work going into improving technical stack not directly visible to end users.

With a look at the huge changelog and the steady amount of github issues being fixed, it is however not fair t say “nothing is happening”. Many things users complained about for over a decade have been fixed during the last few years. Many syntax definitions have been significantly improved, especially supporting all sorts of web development workflows. Not only core but also template 3rd-party syntaxes.

Sure, a small team of half a dozen of developers can’t provide the amount of features big tech compenies can. That’s probably - I can only guess - one of the major reasons those perfectionists at sublimehq concentrate on improving qualitiy of what is present instead of jumping onto each hyped new stuff.

I am fully with you, I’d also like to see more visible features made sublime every here and then. But with the wide range of possible use cases it’s probably hard to implement things everyone sees.

[Slighting6860]

The issue isn’t so much that there are no changes that are immediately obvious, I very much believe that there are lots of changes in the background (although I wouldn’t call the changelogs ‘huge’ by any means, especially not for a paid package, I’ve seen solo FOSS devs produce more changes).
The issue is that this licensing change came with the big ST4 update, which implied that they were linked. Maybe they should have communicated more clearly that these changes had nothing to do with each other and just happened to get pushed out at the same time, as the expectation set for me and many others was that we’d see a similar update any time we were forced to upgrade our license.

Regardless, the objectively very low frequency of updates and small changes in those updates that Sublime has seen throughout the years was perfectly fine with the previous lifetime license model, but with the current model I don’t foresee many new users coming in. Sublime is a power tool, but the user experience is incredibly dated at this point, and with free alternatives that can do the same and more with better onboarding and usability, it’s hard to justify going through the steep learning curve to get to know and learn how to use Sublime. Sublime survived because it was the most powerful in its price class, and that’s simply no longer true, both due to the coming of other tools and this license change.

This thread isn’t about the licensing itself so I guess I’ll leave it at that. I’m curious to see what they do with it in the future. For me personally, the 4180 build is not worth $80. I’d have gladly paid $30 for a renewal just out of sheer goodwill towards the devs, but $80 is a steep price for a minor update, and with the expectation of four whole noteworthy updates until a license has to be renewed again it really needs some bangers to justify that price tag.

[soeren]

But… Your liceses are atill working!!

Sure it says: “LICENSE UPGRADE REQUIRED” in the title bar (also mine), but I’m not down to no llicense. I do not get the nagging popup once in a while as you do if you are unlicensed.

So honestly, this thread is complaining about a title change…

I do not recall if it was only valid for 3 years whenever I bought it, but I did also have a ST3 license, which I had to swap (buy) for ST4 back in 2021. I assume the same will happen with ST5.

[deathaxe]

The 3 years license change was indeed made several years before ST4 released. Don’t remember the exact year though.

To the best of my knowledge, ST changed to a rolling release model. Actually It is just Sublime Text build 4xxx. Hence there won’t be a ST5 - just a ST build 5000+ in some years.

[bschaaf]

The license change was made as part of the ST4 release, but ST3 licenses were grandfathered into the new system. The whole reason for the license change is so that we no longer need to hold back improvements and new features for the next major version. As a consequence there aren’t really major versions anymore and thus no large updates.

With the old model we wouldn’t have shipped half of the improvements to ST4 that we have, instead holding them back for a ST5. That makes the changelog look better when you’re upgrading, but you’re getting features and fixes that were ready years ago and we need to spend more time maintaining two separate versions.