Sublime Forum

Consider GPL?

#1

I am not sure how many sales are made per month with Sublime Text now, but I imagine it has decreased significantly in the last year or two. I still think ST, being native rather than running in a WebKit window, has a great potential for being the most popular graphical text editor, but it will continue to dwindle if others are not allowed to work on it. Currently, many developers are wary of using a proprietary text editor since there are many great alternatives, but the few of us ST users left have a special attachment for the software regardless of the shrinking userbase. The custom cross-platform UI framework could possibly be used for other project applications after being made a standalone library by contributers.

I believe the GNU General Public License would be ideal for Sublime Text, as it disallows nonfree derivatives.

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#2

[quote=“IngoP”]

Horrible idea. Almost all Sublime Text devs I know that write plugins pick liberal licenses like MIT, BSD or Apache. A GPL core would rub a lot of people the wrong way.

And in practice, forks in non-GPL land are just as reciprocal as GPL anyway.[/quote]

I suggest GPL because it is more likely for Jon to be comfortable releasing his software to the free software community only, rather than providing a foundation for other commercial applications not benefiting him. Sure, MIT, BSD, or Apache would be more free and would benefit the public more, and it would be fantastic if Jon supported it, but it’s a less drastic change from proprietary to GPL that he is more likely to agree with. Remember, the current state of Sublime Text’s license is far from the differences of GPL vs. MIT.

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#3

The GPL would enforce certain license terms to us plug-in developers like me which basically disallow free development. Please stop suggesting non-free licenses. +1 for the 2-clause BSD license.

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#4

[quote=“tux.”]
The GPL would enforce certain license terms to us plug-in developers like me which basically disallow free development. Please stop suggesting non-free licenses. +1 for the 2-clause BSD license.[/quote]

You are not bundling the Sublime Text binary in your plugins, are you? Then it would be no worse than the current license.

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#5

[quote=“tux.”]
The GPL would enforce certain license terms to us plug-in developers like me which basically disallow free development.[/quote]

Can you explain this without too much effort?

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#6

Precisely. But, still, please try to understand the difference.

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#7

Yes, I understand the difference.

Regardless of the license, how likely is it that Sublime Text will be released as free software in the future? Is this a lost hope, or should I continue using Sublime Text in hope of it being revived?

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