It seems like the author's beef is with the fact that ST2 hasn't really seen any incremental updates, not that ST3 will be a paid upgrade. Honestly, I haven't really had anything to complain about with ST2, but I do understand those hoping for some small updates over time. The biggest concern I have with ST3 is the breaking api changes. These changes will lead to one or more of the following:
1. packages won't be upgraded and will go stale
2. packages will be upgraded and users will be forced to buy ST3
3. package devs will have to maintain separate versions for ST2 and ST3
None of these are very attractive results of the breaking changes coming.
I share your concerns. I'm glad to see ST3 is making the leap to Python 3, though, and that's probably as good a time as any to make other backward-incompatible API changes. I would hope that it should be more stable afterward and that the jump to a hypothetical ST4 would be incremental.
Yeah, this is what worries me, too. I really like the direction ST3 is heading but many of my packages don't yet work for ST3. I'm not sure how this has a "happy" resolution. It's gonna suck for a while.
1. packages won't be upgraded and will go stale
2. packages will be upgraded and users will be forced to buy ST3
3. package devs will have to maintain separate versions for ST2 and ST3
None of these are very attractive results of the breaking changes coming.