[wbond]

Just to clarify, we’ve done major releases in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and now early 2021. We also released a second product (Sublime Merge) in 2018 and did a major release of that in 2020.

There haven’t been any significant gaps in our release cadence since before I joined the company in 2016.

That said, the current dev cycle has been a little longer because people do expect more from major version releases. We’ve got a large collection of new features, improvements and bug fixes coming with this release.

We’ve addressed over 600 issues on GitHub in the current release, added some pretty significant changes, and laid the foundation for more to come. IMO, it is by far the most significant release we’ve ever done.

We’ve also got some changes planned to help shorten our release cycles moving forward!

[jrochkind1]

Interesting. As a long-time ST user, I was unaware that the level of ongoing work on ST is what you say it is.

I'm not interested in using a discord server to keep up.

But a monthly blog post with "what's happened in ST this month" might go a long way for letting users understand that it is still alive. The monthly post could even include things happening in the plugin ecosystem, interesting new plugins or popular plugins with new releases. But just 2-3 paragraphs a month would suffice.

As it is, I go to the ST website and it looks like it's stagnated, I see no sign of life. I'm not interested in intensively following dev releases, but I am interested in every once in a while checking out what's been going on that I might want to know about, and seeing evidence that ST is still alive.

I don't know for sure how typical I am, but based on this HN comment thread, I suspect I'm not alone.

[signal11]

Maybe a Twitter account that focuses on what's new and what's coming down the pipe? Most people don't really follow forums. The current Twitter account last tweeted about Sublime Text in March 2019, I think -- exactly 2 years ago.

I guess the blog could also work, especially if it auto-publishes to social media, but of late that too, like the Twitter feed, has been mostly about Sublime Merge -- whereas I care a lot more about Sublime Text.

I think Sublime is really good and has lots of value even in a world with VS Code, but it's important to ensure people inclined to giving it a go sense that the project is ticking along well.

[imdsm]

I know you have your reasons and I won't question your capacity or vision, but I'd definitely be more interested in an active 'Sublime Text' that is maintained on an ongoing basis than the current major release model you have.

Back when ST started to get popular, you were up against Notepad++, TextEdit2, Visual Studio perhaps, and others. Now there's Atom and VSCode that are actively maintained and have active communities. I doubt I'll use ST4, but I wish you all the best, but I do think the model is wrong.

[wbond]

The “active” version of Sublime Text are our development builds.

We’ve just been releasing those discreetly during this current dev cycle since we’ve got a huge user base and wanted a smaller group to test some of our bigger changes on.

For our future dev cycles, our dev builds will be returning to our site.

[danpalmer]

Instead of taking 2 years to close 600 issues, why not ship a release each month with just a handful addressed? I think plugin developers are more likely to keep their plugins maintained if it looks like Sublime Text is alive.

I'd much rather pay $50 a year for ~monthly releases than $70 every 2-3 years for one release and a few bug fixes.

[wbond]

Part of our development pace is that we are a small team (six engineers), bootstrapped, maintaining multiple products, and looking to do things in a way that fits with our vision for the products. We want to build products that are around for the long haul – Sublime Text has been around for 15 years. We'd rather focus on quality and performance than adding lots of features.

We are doing a big release because our current licensing scheme requires a "major version" release for paid updates. If we did a release once a month, they would all be trivial features, and wouldn't justify a major version bump.

For license holders, we've actually been shipping new dev builds every one to two weeks. However, since this is a major release, it has some very significant changes that need testing, refining and polishing. I don't think anyone in their right mind would ship a half-finished product and call it a major release, so we've been doing the work that shows it is a major release. The downside of bigger releases is that sometimes they end up dragging on a little longer than you want, and we'd rather uphold our vision for the product than have a release done a few months earlier.

As I mentioned in my post above, we've got some changes coming that will help address the "major version" issue and allow us to take on a faster release cycle. That said, I'm not sure I agree that new releases once a month are a good fit for the majority of users. We do, however, provide dev builds for users who do like seeing changes quickly.

We've got a super active group of some of the more prolific plugin developers that we interact with on a daily basis on our public Discord server. They definitely provide a lot of feedback and we make a point of listening to what the have to say.

The reality of it is that most open source developers wax and wane in their development work. The ones who stick with projects for years and years tend to either do open source work related to their day job, or are at least partially employed to work on the open source work. Others will get an itch, scratch it, share it, improve it and then be satisfied.

[kstrauser]

I’m saying this because I like Sublime Text and want you to succeed:

As an end user: that model doesn’t work for me at all. Most other apps I use get regular feature and bugfix updates and I admit that I’m spoiled by those regular updates. That ST2 went so very long between releases made it feel like a dead project. Even if behind the scenes it was still active and healthy, I didn’t see that and couldn’t tell the difference between “actively developed, thriving project that just doesn’t release often” and “developer woke up one month and thought ‘hey, I should close a feature request or two this quarter’”.

Again, I’m definitely not arguing that you’re not hard at work on it. I mean this in the spirit of feedback: as an end user who wasn’t active in the plugin developer forums, I didn’t realize anyone was still working on it full-time. And because of that, I stopped using ST because it felt like it was a dead end and I wanted to put my mental resources toward learning and using something still alive and thriving.

[doubleunplussed]

Just to provide push from the other side, I'm completely fine with this model. I don't get the need for churn.

Who cares if it "feels" like a dead project? I know it's not dead, I don't care what it feels like.

I don't use software for the feeling of being up to date on the cutting edge, I use it because it suits my needs.

[kstrauser]

By “feels” I meant “as far as I can tell without investing a ton of research”. Dead projects don’t get bugfixes, or builds for new versions of the OS. They’re ticking time bombs. I would not voluntarily use an abandoned product, and would much prefer investing my time getting good at a maintained one.

Turns out ST wasn’t actually a dead project, although it seemed like it. The ST team probably lost more users than just me from not communicating.

[abenga]

It is a text editor. A really good one. It could edit files really well last year, and continues to do so really well now. Which possible bugs can be surfaced day to day, or week to week that need fixes?

I am glad to pay for software that doesn't keep me on the run like a treadmill. It is possible for software as simple as a text editor to be "finished".

[jostyee]

Plugin developers do care, there are so many active maintained plugins now dead, for me the 2 Go official plugins had been abandoned for years, they didn’t even bother to merge bugfixes.

[spurgu]

+1, I've used ST for ~6 years now and never had any issues. To me it just feels solid to not get updates every damn week but instead every couple of months where I browse through the changelog and then go back to using an awesome editor.

Really excited about ST4, looks like a major upgrade!

[dralley]

I don't necessarily agree.

I like VSCode, and I use it for a lot of IDE-like stuff. But for normal reading and writing code? I use Sublime Text. Sublime Text is so much faster and more fluid, and able to handle much larger files, and has a better set of text editing tricks in my opinion. And that is worth enough to me that I wouldn't trade it for being able to do everything in one editor.

Sublime + plugins has "enough" features that I only switch when I really need to. And while I can't put my finger on exactly why I feel this way, text just seems to look more pleasant than on other editors, even when using the same fonts and similar color schemes.

[kstrauser]

I didn’t mention VSCode in that comment, and I don’t think it’s really relevant to what I was saying. I switched from ST to a different editor (and not directly to VSCode) because I was under the impression that ST was no longer being actively developed. I don’t have anything bad to say about ST other than I didn’t like how it didn’t handle Python project environments well, and if I had believed it was still being actively worked on, I might have stuck with it.

[danpalmer]

> For license holders, we've actually been shipping new dev builds every one to two weeks.

I'm a licence holder and I haven't seen an update since October 2019. Despite reading most of this thread I haven't managed to figure out where any more recent releases are. Can you point me towards them?

[danpalmer]

I've now managed to get the update.

Respectfully, ST devs, I think you might need to have a hard look at how you do customer communication. I stopped using ST essentially because of stagnation that hadn't actually happened!

[musingsole]

> Respectfully, ST devs, I think you might need to have a hard look at how you do customer communication

You have really odd expectations of a small team making a targeted tool and for which you have expounded at length about how it doesn't work for you. Cool beans, my dude.

I love Sublime. The devs have earned a good portion of my trust to keep on rocking; they'll get my license fee whenever they ask for it (the benefit of trust).

[danpalmer]

I just find it odd that they'd lose customers over lack of communication. I'm not the only person in this thread who didn't realise it was under active development.

I'm all for small dev teams doing things that let them stay small, but we're not talking about substantial changes here, we're talking about a sentence on their website saying "ST4 is in active development, you can follow progress on the forums", or other small changes like that.

[pizza234]

> You have really odd expectations of a small team making a targeted tool and for which you have expounded at length about how it doesn't work for you

I actually agree with the parent.

I've been a long time ST, and I've found significant limitations and bugs; since they haven't been fixed/improved for a while, and there were no news, I switched, and I'm not going back again.

While the parent's post may have been better phrased, I think that it's correct that with a better communication, they could have retained more customers.

[kemayo]

You need to join their Discord to find the Sublime Text 4 dev channel. It's not marketed anywhere, you just have to have searched their forum for it. https://discord.gg/D43Pecu

Sublime Text 3, as you say, has gone without dev updates since 2019 with no announcements about why or pointers to the new version.

Yes, they're very bad at some of these communications issues. :D

[wbond]

We intentionally decided to have the dev builds for ST4 go to a smaller group of people, paired with a low-friction communication medium.

Clearly you disagree with that decision, but we do communicate with our users pretty much every day. We simply decided trying to communicate and gather feedback from tens of thousands of users was less productive for a team of six than hundreds of engaged power users.

[kemayo]

My only disagreement with your chosen course was the lack of update on the ST3 dev builds page. As-is, it gives the impression to users like the ones I replied to that there's no progress being made.

Sticking a note at the top of the ST3 dev build page akin to the one on the ST2 dev builds page, even without a link to the discord or new builds, would have changed their perception of things.

Or even just a post on your news blog that you're moving active development to an upcoming version? A pinned post on your forum? There really was no communication to users who're not actively involved in the community, that I could find.

[NDizzle]

Am I in the minority that I don't want to see updates monthly for a desktop application? It seems like every time I launch paint.net, for example, it wants to update. I don't want to update! I want to edit an image.

[ggregoire]

If I used paint.net 8 hours a day on daily basis as I do with VSCode, yeah I'd would probably want to keep it updated as much as possible. Also I rarely "launch" VSCode, it's always open. Which means the updates are downloaded in background and it just shows a small icon at the bottom right when it's ready to be restarted. It's almost invisible and doesn't bother me at all, and I can wait as much as I want before restarting it.

[fomine3]

BTW paint.net has the best integrated auto updater I've ever used. It notifies at startup but has "Install When I Exit" button on update notification dialog. Of course auto update by package manager is still better. (paint.net also available on Windows Store)

[Fnoord]

Discord, an application used by ST community, suffers from exactly that as well.

"Release early, release often" -- but not too often. I'm not a beta tester, I want stable software.

[wedowhatwedo]

I completely agree.

[placidpanda]

Since there were a lot of people clamoring for more updates, subscription licensing, etc. I just wanted to add some volume to the opposing viewpoint.

I registered my copy of sublime text maybe 8 years ago. Before that I had used Notepad++ for years as well. I love that sublime is a thing that I paid for once and I can trust that it will always fundamentally work without problems for my basic use cases. I never have to think about "oh well I'm not doing so much text editing at the moment, maybe I'll turn it off for now..." like I do with some other subscriptions. I'm not worried it won't work or will degrade because it seems stable as a rock. I primarily used Windows when I bought it, and I've been Mac only for 4 years, and it's still with me.

Sublime text is special and I love what you guys have done! And I appreciate that for my $80 or whatever it was, I can use this thing the way I use it right now and never worry about it again.

Honestly, I think people are being reactionary from how common abandonware is in the open source community (obviously sublime is closed source, but people who use sublime use a lot of open source), as well as the long delay between ST2 and ST3. I remember plugins with docs that said "I have abandoned this project because Sublime Text is dead" when ST3 was still in beta. It is... probably not great that when I check the About window on my copy of SublimeText, it says Copyright 2019 and the changelog on your website says October 2019. It is useful for a customer facing product to not look dead, but this is completely possible without being forced to ship updates or features on a regular basis. Just be mindful of customer perceptions and what the touch points are and be patient and consistent within your bandwidth.

[Mawr]

I've wanted to buy Sublime Text for a long time, but I couldn't justify it due to:

> A license is valid for Sublime Text 3 [...]. Future major versions, such as Sublime Text 4, will be a paid upgrade.

> [...] an upgrade fee will be required for Sublime Text 4.

I'd feel pretty bad if I bought ST3 and the next day you'd decide to release ST4 and now I'd have to pay for an upgrade. Why not just stick to the terms on the buy page:

> Personal licenses are a once off purchase, and come with 3 years of updates. After 3 years, an upgrade will be required to receive further updates.

Why not:

> [...] come with 3 years of updates *regardless of version*.

Then I wouldn't have to worry about a new release being right around the corner.

As it's now I can only feel comfortable buying ST when a new major version comes out, which sucks. I could have bought it years ago.

I understand that providing release dates of future major versions can be hard but could you at least show the cost of the upgrade?

Sublime is great btw, I'll definitely make a purchase once ST4 comes out <3

[tester89]

I think that’s a clarity issue on the page. They stated several times in the discord that buying an ST3 licence now covers ST4 as well.

[hnrodey]

Do you have any options for a reduced cost license? Ideally I get enough value from the tool that I'd like to contribute financially but the current cost is (for me) too high. Perhaps I should just continue with the occasional nag popup.

I really enjoy using Sublime Text for some parts my daily workflow yet that equates for me using like 5% of the actual functionality. I don't actively write code within ST but use it for stuff surrounding my coding workflow.

Nonetheless, thanks for the product. I really enjoy it.

edit: lol downvotes because I'm trying to give someone money

[wedowhatwedo]

I bought the product in 2015. I don't remember the cost but let's assume it was $80. (EDIT, I just looked and it was $70 at the time) That's $16 a year. If you use even 5% of the functionality, isn't it worth that? I don't know what country you are from and there my be economic differences but sublime text has been one of the best software purchases I've made. It's worth every cent.

If you don't feel it's worth $80, you can use Visual Studio Code for free.

[ipaddr]

Are you offering to purchase this product for the parent commentor?

Unless you are offering to pay for it because the cost is so little I'm not sure your rebuttal holds water.

$80.00 US is a lot for an editor that doesn't provide updates.

[therealdrag0]

I don’t understand this whole threads obsession with updates. ST has always seemed like a finished product to me. Always does what I expect and is stable. I’m happy for paying the price I did for the features I got at that time.

[wedowhatwedo]

I completely disagree.

I didn't pay $80 for an editor that doesn't provide updates. I paid $70 for 5 years use of an editor that has updated a major version and a few minor versions and that I've installed on many workstations and VMs through the years. I use it every day so I'm glad I paid.

The parent commentor said they are already using it and will continue to do so without paying. Neither of you need to pay for the editor if you don't like it. Just use a different one.

[dralley]

It's a one-time fee. Personally, I still felt it was worth it.

[wedowhatwedo]

No, the downvotes are because you aren't willing to pay a very fair price for the product and have admitted you depend on it and use it without paying and will continue to do so.