I was recently stung with this message after a recent automatic upgrade to Sublime Text meant it wanted a new license purchase. I’ll include some steps to disable that upgrade and keep using an older version that worked for me.
Personally I decided not to renew. I’m fine with purchasing licenses for good software, but this data-destroying bug I reported in 2019 and possibly going back to 2015 which has been ignored for years:
with detailed steps to reproduce. This problem has also been going around for some time before I found it. I gave up using Sublime Text seriously as a fix was never coming even after years, though I still use it for simple text editing since I was out the license fee anyway.
A silent data-destroying bug isn’t acceptable for a text editor.
I was recently automatically updated and I’m being asked for money for a new license. Here’s how to stop that. Following are some steps to downgrade, they might help in your environment too.
For me, the latest version I could use without a new license is 4169. You’ll have to change that value in what follows to suit. My architecture is amd64, yours may differ.
Download latest version you can use from: https://www.sublimetext.com/download
Get rid of the existing package:
dpkg -r sublime-text
Remove the automatic update:
cd /etc/apt
mkdir -p disabled
mv ./sources.list.d/sublime-text.list disabled/
mv ./trusted.gpg.d/sublimehq-archive.gpg disabled/
apt update
Manually install just the version you need:
dpkg -i sublime-text_build-4169_amd64.deb
I hope this helps anyone else in a similar situation.