Blog posts like these are interesting but do they really belong on Hacker News? The author's complaints are half-hearted and even contradictory (beta software doesn't have proper upgrade path for prior stable versions? how is that surprising?).
Furthermore the sense of entitlement is a little obscene, especially since it's clear the author knows that he paid for a license but he doesn't acknowledge that there is no SLA or any guarantee of software maintenance.
"Furthermore the sense of entitlement is a little obscene"
Really? The author's criticism is constructive says he's perfectly willing to pay a yearly subscription fee as opposed to Sublime Text's current revenue model, which is to whack you over the head for money at arbitrary intervals if you wish to stay current.
In fact, since Sublime Text's major point releases have been more than 12 months apart, he's actually stating that he's willing to give Sublime Text's author money more frequently than he does today. If that's "entitlement" then I need some more "entitled" clients.
"especially since it's clear the author knows that he paid for a license but he doesn't acknowledge that there is no SLA or any guarantee of software updates whatsoever."
This is awfully disingenuous, especially on a tech-oriented site like HN.
When programmers choose a development tool (particularly a text editor) they're investing time and/or money in not just the editor itself but the ecosystem around the editor - the plugin community, frequency of updates to the editor itself, etc.
"When programmers choose a development tool (particularly a text editor) they're investing time and/or money in not just the editor itself but the ecosystem around the editor - the plugin community, frequency of updates to the editor itself, etc."
One year after ST2 stop development, or even more years afterward, I will probably still be using it. It's stable and since the API is documented and likely not to change then the community will likely continue to persist. It is extraordinarily stable.
That's not to say I don't care for new versions and I will definitely use ST3 and above well into the future as well, but I don't forsee the ways we program (or the tools we use) changing for some time and I think it's amazing that ST2 will probably stand the test of time as one of the better alternatives to other closed-source editors.
What do you use ST2 for? I use it for coding, primarily for the web, so in a large sense ST2's value for me depends on package creators keeping the various packages updated for the ever-evolving world of web standards and frameworks.
It seems unrealistic to me to think that a significant number of package creators will continue to support ST2 after ST3 is released.
Of course, not everybody uses ST2 in ways that depend on it being kept up-to-date with changing tools and standards. For those people, no real loss when a lot of the package creators move on to ST3 or something else.
says he's perfectly willing to pay a yearly subscription fee
I don't know the author at all, but such claims generally deserve skepticism: It's easy to proclaim how grandly generous one would be if only another party did x, y and z.. We see that here, just as the same dubious claim appears in every single piracy discussion.
I'm kinda baffled that in every discussion that mentions ST3 upgrade and lack of bug fixes for ST2 words like "entitlement" are showing in the discussion. There has always been an implicit agreement between software developers and customers that they are at least put effort into fixing bugs and releasing those fixes as non-paid point releases. If the rules are changing (I'm not saying that they are, but comments like this seem to suggest that) then maybe software developers should state clearly on their page that they are not planning on releasing free bug-fix updates. It seems like something I'd like to know before I actually pay for software.
Some people are commenting that ST2 works great for them, and they don't see any bugs, but AFAIR in the ST3 announcement comment thread on HN someone has been writing on how he had to work around crasher in ST2 that has not been fixed after ST2 stable release.
Before I go off on this tangent: I own a license to ST2 but use VIM. I have no intention of buying ST3 and thus have no skin in the game.
Blog posts like these are interesting but do they really belong on Hacker News?
Why wouldn't they belong on Hacker News?
First, the ecosystem is designed in such a way that "popular" or "interesting" content (disclaimer: this may not include things you find interesting) get bubbled up so others can discover it. If it truly didn't belong on the site, it would just get buried.
Second, I'd wager that a decent percentage of the reader-base either use or have considered using Sublime Text. This information is thus relevant to them.
Third, it's about a startup (makers of ST), a business decision, and a customer's response to that decision. That basically reads "hacker news" moreso than a lot of the content I see get bubbled up.
Furthermore the sense of entitlement is a little obscene...
The author prefaced this by declaring that he doesn't mind having to pay for an upgrade. He even advocated for a subscription plan. His issue is with the way they handled the whole process.
Unlike anything else, when you buy software it contains issues and bugs. You do so knowingly with the caveat that the vendor will continue to address those problems. This agreement, whether in SLA form or unspoken, is what enables software companies to actually ship products.
If a company chooses to cease support before an expected time frame is up in favor of building a new, isolated version without backwards compatibility then there will undoubtedly be upset customers. This is especially true for products that have an ecosystem built around them.
Furthermore the sense of entitlement is a little obscene, especially since it's clear the author knows that he paid for a license but he doesn't acknowledge that there is no SLA or any guarantee of software maintenance.