[pjmlp]

People need to eat, pay the bills.....

I doubt donations would be even half of what his creator is getting now.

$70 dollars is already pretty ok, considering I was paying above 150 with student discount on the mid-90 for software tools.

Why this urge to get stuff for free, yet wanting to sell own work.

And yes, I do donnate to all FOSS projects relevant to my work, as if I had bought a license.

[captainmuon]

The demo is already unlimited. People wo want to free-load (or can't afford a license) can already now user it for free.

I know there are many people who will obey the license, but would not donate. If you dual license it (commerical and GPL), they'd just accept the GPL "deal". So it still makes sense to not have a GPL option business wise.

But what about, instead of open source, they make it "source open" or "source available"? Here is the source, you may not use it unless I die. Or you may use it, but not sell it. Or you must contribute changes back if you release a changed version...

They have no big trade secrets in the source. They already rely on the fact that customers obey licenses that they materially don't have to. So I believe they have nothing to lose by making the source available.

[pjmlp]

Other than having others packing the software and selling it as theirs.

[blowski]

The OP said they're happy to pay for it. Open source doesn't necessarily imply zero cost.

[ternaryoperator]

>Open source doesn't necessarily imply zero cost.

While it's true you can charge for your OSS product, all OSS licenses allow the recipient to distribute the source code (and the built binaries) at no cost. So, OSS does imply free, even if it doesn't mandate it.

[baldfat]

The source code not compiled code.

[dewiz]

actually:

>> Just please consider making it free software for all of us

[blowski]

> I wish the Sublime Text people open sourced their code. I'd _buy_ it from them in that event. (Emphasis is mine)

I took that to mean the OP wanted it to be "free as in freedom" not "free as in beer".

[Biganon]

Free software doesn't imply gratuity (and neither does open source)

[pjmlp]

How many GNU/Linux users pay for their distributions?

[gravypod]

I'd pay for a distribution if it was better then free (cost) software.

For instance, if Apple decided today "Hey why not just make OSX a set of applications, a window manager, and a desktop environment for Linux and make it free software." I'd pay for it. I'd pay the 100 bucks because no one really does UX better then Apple.