Sublime Forum

Does Sublime share code with TextMate?

#1

I’ve been trying Sublime for a couple of days and I’ve been very satisfied with this nice editor, until I stumbled upon a file named C++.tmLanguage in the Packages/ directory. This file is a direct conversion of a file taken from a direct competitor of Sublime, TextMate, even the comments inside the file are the identical! The only difference is that TM uses the .plist format and ST2 the .xml format. However the structure is identical and even the comments are identical, so it must be a direct conversion.

So, as it seems unlikely that two competitors share code, and neither TextMate nor Sublime acknowledge in their credits any external project from which the files may have been taken, the only option seems to be that someone is copying from someone.

Does anyone know a little more about this issue?

(By the way, the comment inside the file is signed by “Chris”, and in the TextMate credits there is one person by that name… I don’t want to accuse anyone, though, I just want to settle this doubt down before considering buying ST2)

Regards.

0 Likes

#2

Sublime Text 2 is compatible with Textmate snippets, color schemes, .tmLanguage files and .tmPreferences files.

0 Likes

#3

Correct. But being compatible with TextMate stuff does not mean including TextMate stuff in your application.

0 Likes

#4
0 Likes

#5

Fine, then… I didn’t know that part of TM is open source, and I couldn’t imagine that the license is even more permissive than the BSD one and doesn’t require attribution. Sorry for the inconvenience!

0 Likes

#6

The files you’re referring to have nothing to do with application code. TextMate bundles are (primarily) created & maintained by the community, and are also used in other editors such as E (e-texteditor.com/). As COD13 mentioned, ST2 is just able to use some elements of TM bundles to extend functionality.

0 Likes

Licensing of files reused from TextMate
Thoughts from an Emacs user