Updated sublime text editor earlier today and it immediately prompts me to enter my product key. I have no problem paying for such a great tool, and I suppose its about time that I do, I was just curious if this was documented any where. I was still under the impression that it was free to use.
No longer free to evaluate
Abyssal
#2
Same problem here. I just installed the latest version with my Linux package manager (I had been upgrading from archives until now) and I do not happen to have a license key. I won’t be able to get any soon, so I’d like to know whether it’s an install issue or a business model change. 
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deathaxe
#4
Not sure whether 3143 is considered dev channel? It appears on the normal download page and should therefore be in stable channel with evaluation enabled.
Or do I miss something?
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kingkeith
#5
most likely people heard about the update and the package managers and entered the dev repo url, no?
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Abyssal
#6
Thanks a lot @kingkeith ! I thought it was related to 3.0 so I did not search this far in time. What I did is merely follow the instructions on https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/linux_repositories.html. I did not know about this difference between dev and stable. What about adding a small note when the dev channel is mentioned?
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mk3y
#7
Big fat NO THANK YOU. How many years now has Sublime Text 3 been in development? 2013 right?
And now we’re expected to upgrade for 30 bucks. And no more free evaluations. This just solidifies my move to Atom.io Yeah, I’d have donated to the development over the years, if that had been an option.
What I don’t like is 5 yrs of a beta product I’ve been using on my old license, getting a little upgrade message this morning, and then seeing “UPGRADE LICENSE REQUIRED” and being asked for $30 bucks.
Bye, Bye Sublime.
At least with Atom, I know it won’t take five years for bugs to get fixed.
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Monty
#9
Really? $30 is cheap, especially if you are using Sublime Text for work. I just shelled out $80 for the full license today, was holding off until 3.0 because I, too, was a bit worried about the very long development schedule from 2.0 to 3.0 and didn’t want to throw money away on software that may have stalled. But when I saw the 3.0 update today, I went and bought the license to support the author and further development.
Do you expect people to create good software like Sublime Text for free forever? I will happily pay a $30 upgrade fee for 4.0, or whatever the upgrade cost will be then. I’ve tried many IDEs over the years, and few are as good or a pleasure to use as Sublime Text.
9 Likes
mwb1100
#11
I’m guessing what might be happening is that you have a v2 license. That license was valid for the v3 betas, but is not valid for the v3 release. That’s why you’ve been able to use the v3 betas for 4 years without being asked for an upgrade fee, but now are.
Many people bought keys after the v3 beta started, and those keys are actual v3 keys so they don’t need to pay for an upgrade.
All of this was announced when the v3 beta started. It seems to me that the biggest thing that ‘changed’ was that the v3 beta had such a long duration. My recollection is that it was supposed to be something on the order of a year, and it ended up being more than 4 years. One way to look at that is that the v2 licenses were useful for much longer than they were supposed to be. I’m not sure it’s reasonable to complain that “I was able to use my v2 license for 4 years instead of only 1 year before being asked to pay for an upgrade”.
On the other hand it might be reasonable to complain that while v3 was in beta there were no (or few?) bug fixes for v2. But that’s different than being asked to pay for v3.
All that said - I have a v2 license and my install of build 3143 isn’t demanding anything. It does say “(LICENSE UPGRADE REQUIRED)” in the title bar - that’s all. I don’t know if there’s a time bomb that will cause it to stop actually working at some point and require an upgraded license key. This is on Windows in case the behavior is different on Linux.
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Noodle
#12
I love Sublime. I use it every day. I too purchased the full license today, and am happy to support the people who do such a fine job at it.
I almost quit programming a while back because I was getting older, and my memory isn’t what it used to be. With the help of sublime and a few other tools I use to mitigate this issue, I’m still at it… hammering out the code. Thanks so much!
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heyglen
#13
I paid for my license.
I’ve been using the evaluation for a few years. This is a quality product and they should get paid.
Keep it up and I’ll happily pay the v4 license.
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mrsean2k
#14
Being stiffed for $30 after getting 5 years of use out of a product - man, that’s a pretty rough deal. Sending thoughts and prayers.
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