I guess the upgrade to ST4 with a valid ST3 license can be considered an end of life ST3 upgrade. They have already said the nag ware is not there anymore, so really all that you are experiencing is some text that says you need to upgrade your license to get future updates… its pretty much ST3 end of life.
I dont see anyone saying you will be force to upgrade your license if you want to use ST4 with your ST3 license.
Its an upgrade because you WANT the cool new stuff policy. Upgrade because of their excellence. Upgrade because you enjoy sublime. Its not a upgrade now or you cant continue to work policy.
There arent any real downsides to using the ST4 release and NOT upgrading your license vs using the last ST3 upgrade.
I really dont see what people are so upset about.
You got a free upgrade to ST4 out of the deal. Its just the last update you will get without updating your license…
IMHO thats pretty fair. 3 years of updates for a license rev. Its better than many other paid tools.
I for one want the sublime guys to fix the dependency promblems in the 3.8 runtime and add variable fonts per buffer or narrowing support and as long as they keep working to make sublime substantially better and listening to their community, I dont mind chipping in for gas.
If they actually did hold my ability to use what I have already bought hostage as part of an update. Yeah, I would be pretty ticked off. But they didnt do that here. They just notified you that this is it. You want more updates, you have to upgrade.
At this point I would say… dont upgrade. Wait and see what really cool stuff the sublime team builds. If its awesome, upgrade… if its not. Stay on ST4 rc1 and enjoy.