[woodruffw]

I had this happen to me this morning on macOS: I saw there was an update available, accepted it, and ended up with ST4. I was planning on buying it in the immediate future anyways, but having it sprung on me actually saved me $10 (thanks to the release period discount).

Overall, I'm not too upset about this -- a lot of the commenters in the linked thread seem to think that software shouldn't change major versions without (more) explicit consent, but ST4's backwards compatibility appears to be perfect so far (I have all kinds of weird personal plugins that use less-documented parts of the ST API, and they're all still working). They could have certainly made the update message clearer, but I don't think the developers deserve the kind of indignation they're receiving.

[threatofrain]

Software updates shouldn't leave the user with nothing unless they pay. Also, on Linux, there is no indication that the prior license would be invalid, or that the upgrade required further payment.

And the prior license had no expiration date, and the new one expires in 3 years.

[woodruffw]

> Software updates shouldn't leave the user with nothing unless they pay.

I didn't leave it unregistered for long enough to confirm this, but: ST has historically been fully functional even when unregistered -- the only difference between a registered and unregistered copy is/was the nag dialogue they display every 10 saves. I don't think it's accurate to say that this update "leaves the user with nothing" -- the update was fully functional (and reversible!) right out of the box.

> Also, on Linux, there is no indication that the license would be invalid, or that the upgrade required further payment.

Same on macOS. I agree that this should have been made much more explicit.