Sublime Forum

Why pay for Sublime text license?

#1

At one point I asked myself the same question and thought why buy it when i can use the trial indefinitely or find a loophole to use it with no pop up, but it came down to I build sites freelance and make money doing so. I wouldn’t want to build a website for someone and they find a loophole into not paying me.

I will admit Sublime Text is not my only editor. I use at least 3 editors but always come back to Sublime because it is reliable and efficient. Paying for the license helps Sublime Text team make changes, encourages them to continue to make changes (cost them time and money to produce this), and provides you with tools to build most projects you run into.

I can see that some users have trouble paying the current $80 registration fee, and to those I’d say once you are able to afford and get your journey into the dev world going giving back goes a long way.

Side note, if there were ST 3 stickers that’d be cool

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#2

I would like to second this proposal :heart_eyes:

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#3

The use of loopholes is discouraged, as is the use of the software beyond trial.

The trial helps you to find out which value this software has to you.

Whether you are trying out sublime-text or making full use of it is up to you to decide, but in all honesty if you are using ST as your daily text editor for this long or even for commercial purpose as a trial you are lying to yourself!

To me it looks like Sublime HQ is confident enough about their product that they don’t need to put much effort in convincing you which value it has. Just use it and their price tag becomes insignificant, eventually.

The license must be payed for continued use of Sublime Text, regardless of trial, loopholes, ethic concerns or self-denying. If you cannot accept that don’t use the software.

This question appears so many times in this forum because Sublime HQ makes it too easy for us to secretly use their software. It doesn’t feel like deceiving them, and in fact we aren’t. I have never seen even close so much concerns about it with software that took nearly as much effort to crack as it took to develop it.

Disclaimer:
By “you” I mean “us”, by “your” I mean “our”. I am referring to the reader, not anyone in particular.

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#4

Can’t possibly disagree with you!

PS: by “you” I mean @theUltimateSource ( who could dare disagree with THE ultimate source? :wink: )

I’m amazed by how frequently the issue of license vs free use comes up in the forums. Probably a good sign, rather than some bad omen, though.

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#5

Echoing the sentiments of others here, I’d just like to add that I hope SublimeText continues to have their license model in the current manner, so that people like me can evangelize others into paying for the license. I have gotten 3 of my friends (in addition to me) to pay for the license. Goodwill based word-of-mouth recommendations goes a long way in getting people to appreciate a company, their software and their practices - atleast, this is my opinion.

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#6

I find myself in a bit of a pickle here…

I’m very much inclined to buy a license but it has been almost 2 years since v3 was released and v4 could be around the corner…

The moment v4 is published I buy the license…

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#7

Why the need for a Version number? It should be just Sublime Text, with just a build number.
Do you ever know what Chrome you use? Or you find yourself looking it up whenever a feature or something is being talked about.

Versions are HUGE milestones, yet they should not mean a software is worth more or less.

With people finding loopholes and not paying the developers, subscription based apps (Adobe, caugh caugh) will rise, i feel these are “cancer”. Yet, business wise it does make sense for them.

So pay respect and pay for the software you use.

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#8

I understand that. The hesitance lies in the upgrade fee since licenses are also valid for older versions, but not for future versions.

ST HQ has been accommodating for these cases, though.

When v3 was around the corner the license you bought for ST2 already included ST3.

For licenses bought 30 days before ST3 was announced you get a discount when upgrading to ST3.

Any license older than that is subject to the regular upgrade fee.

There will possibly be a similar approach when ST4 comes out?

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#9

Breaking changes.

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#10

In the post below, the original author also was worried that if they bought a license today suddenly version 4 would appear tomorrow and they would be missing out on a new version, and that was two years ago. I don’t know if they ever actually got the license or not, but if they didn’t it’s been a long wait.

It’s a valid concern but you might want to take into account the value that Sublime has for you right now versus the potential of the value that it might have at some indeterminate point of time in the future while you’re deciding.

I have a younger cousin who, for a period of several years, refused to ever have a sleepover at a friends house because he was extremely worried that his parents might order a pizza while he wasn’t there and he wouldn’t get to have any. I’m not sure how much pizza he ended up having, but I would imagine that he missed out on a lot of fun in order to get it.

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#11

Of course, but there are no breaking changes, only progressive ones :slight_smile:

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#12

I mean from what it seems like, st3 has a long shelf life. They have been updating it consistently if you use the dev build. I at one point thought about the version number issue but it feels to me that there will never be a 4 but instead just a consistent change and will be more like how angular stopped using numbers and started just calling it angular. Could be wrong but feel like it’ll move to just being called Sublime Text (no version number)

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#14

Using a paid license ensures that you are in compliance with software’s licensing terms and conditions, It helps you avoid any legal or ethical concerns associated with using unlicensed software.

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#17

I honestly had forgotten I made this post years ago so I thank you for the remind and wholeheartedly agree with your statements and to this day still using a paid license for ST. It dope looking back and seeing others also feel the same about this. Think at the time of writing this original post I was going between ST, vscode, and atom and while atom has been sunsetted I have made it still mainly ST with vscode and pycharm being my alternatives

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#19

I thought I remembered seeing that Sublime Text was $30 as a student. I’ve been using it for free for a very long time. I decided I should finally pay for it (this was my intention, but I kept forgetting to) and found that it’s $99 for 3 years. For me, that’s too much. So I’m asking myself if I should find a different editor, or just keep on and not worry about it. Would rather there was a place to drop a donation.

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#20

I seriously think this is one of the few pieces of software that is worth every cent of my money.

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#21

Until the moment your license “expires” and you realise how much does it cost to renew.

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#22

Hiya,

I’ve a ST license from the ST2 days and I admit I was not using it a lot. Tried to adopt open-source editors like (neo)vim, but it requires lot of time. Several times tried to be productive with Emacs, but recently tried both Eglot and LSP-mode. It was kind of working, but Emacs was crawling.

Another option was to try Helix - nice one, simple config, but considering that at the moment coding is not my main priority, I was amazed that the editor does not even have snippet facility (https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/9801).

Many folks are praising Zed, but after installing both rpm package for my distro (openSUSE Tumbleweed) and downloading binary, it started, but showing no frame on the screen.

Yes, I’m also one of those getting “LICENSE UPGRADE REQUIRED” since my ST4 license expired in May 2024, but then decided that I have enough…

Just updated my ST4 license and added SM to the bundle for $152!

Yesterday, installed several ST packages — LSP for PHP (Intelephense), Python, for web development (HTML, CSS, Bootstrap), for writing Markdown, Typst …everything was done quickly and “It just works!”

So, in a very short period of time, my setup was finished, I can use vim keybindings (thanks to Neo​Vintageous), installed a delightful theme (Guna) and there is not much I can desire of.

Let me emphasize that my usage of ST/SM would be mostly for private writings (studying, taking notes), small coding projects, contributing to open-source etc. Iow. it’s not that I’ll make money by using them…

The only valid alternative would be VSCodium, but I prefer native apps over Electron ones and I’m glad to be able to support small (local) businesses whenever I can.

In this case, coming from Croatia, it’s not local, but ST (I bought SM trying to learn/focus more on Git being widely used over Fossil which I use for private stuff) is big time-saver. The upgrade bundles was $152 and simple maths calculation gives < 1$/€ per week. :astonished:

If my spare time is not worth of such a cost, then I should not use computers at all. :innocent:

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#23

I am really happy for you and I think everyone here praises the usability of ST, and I’m yet to find a person here that would say anything negative to the usefulness of ST.

However, the price for the renewal, and mind you, the renewal and not a new license, is 95% of the cost of the full price. Whichever way you slice it “I used it for years so it turns out it costs me 0.50 $/£/€ per week” the renewal price is shockingly high.

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#24

I believe we have to forget about the lifetime license days…most of the applications are today subscriptions-only — monthly/yearly…which is usually more expensive.

How much you’re paid per hour? My time is, for me, much more precious than the cost of ST/SM - although I’m not drinking coffee, I’m sure that for most drinkers that amount is not sufficient for a single day. :wink:

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