[dpkirchner]

It does, or did, use dark patterns when showing upgrade notices -- prompting you to upgrade to a version that you don't own yet, without telling you you don't own it, leaving you with an unlicensed version. I was happy to use 3 but that felt really off.

[toastercat]

Yeah, I wasn't happy about that. Nor was I happy about the new 3-year-of-updates license model that ST4 adopted.

Although at least to me, Sublime Text 4 feels like a "finished" product.

[ben-schaaf]

ST developer here. We aren't happy that happened either, it was a big oversight in the ST4 release that made people like yourself lose trust in us. I'm sorry and will do my best to not have something like that happen again.

> Nor was I happy about the new 3-year-of-updates license model that ST4 adopted.

I'm curious what you don't like about this model? The most common complaint with regards to updates was the long waiting period between major versions, which we've now eliminated, and without changing the perpetual nature of our licenses.

[agos]

not OP but I am not thrilled by "x months/years of updates" because you pay upfront for updates that you're not really sure that will happen. Will I get bug fixes? Will I get new features or at least significant improvements? Will the two person team work on the other project?

I have had experience with quite a few projects switching to recurring billing, occasionally justifying it with "to support development of great new stuff" and then... just keeping the same rate of updates as before, resulting in a de facto steep upgrade. That said, three years of upgrades for 99$ is reasonable, even if there were only bugfixes

[ben-schaaf]

> not OP but I am not thrilled by "x months/years of updates" because you pay upfront for updates that you're not really sure that will happen. Will I get bug fixes? Will I get new features or at least significant improvements? Will the two person team work on the other project?

Thanks. I guess I'm just not really seeing how that is any different to what we did before? You'd buy a ST3 license with no knowledge of what improvements would be made to ST3.

[toastercat]

It's been a while since I used my ST3 license, but I remember my license affording me all updates for ST3. Maybe that model was unrealistic for ST4, but as others have echoed in this thread, major feature updates for ST4 are not common, so if you bought a license in May of 2022, your access to new features would have expired right before the new updates of the May 2025 release.

Personally, I'm OK with using an old build so I don't mind that much about the limitation. Although if my 3 years elapses right before ST4 introduces first-class LSP support and an official Debugger, I may be very peeved. :)

[ben-schaaf]

> It's been a while since I used my ST3 license, but I remember my license affording me all updates for ST3

That's correct, but it could be the day after you buy the license is when ST3 stops receiving any updates and we dedicate all work to ST4. With a ST4 license you're always getting 3 years of updates, ST3 it was anywhere from 3 to zero (not counting the beta period, ST3 only got 3 years of updates).

> Although if my 3 years elapses right before ST4 introduces first-class LSP support and an official Debugger, I may be very peeved. :)

I think we can all sympathize with some buyer's remorse. Unfortunately the line needs to be drawn somewhere. Maybe you can take solace in that we probably can't put multiple huge features in a single update, at least not a dev release. :)

[agos]

the difference is subtle, and comes mainly from the fact that at the time the concept of Major Release still existed.

You got everything in the current Major Release and every minor and patch update to it. If it took more than three years to release a new Major it was not a big problem, because you were still covered.

The new model might leave you without bugfixes before a new major version is out.

[ben-schaaf]

I think you might be misunderstanding the new licensing model. There are no major versions anymore; features & bugfixes just get released when they're ready.

[xigency]

This happened to me and I tried to recover the last licensed version I had used but mixed up my shortcuts or something and, after the 100th time I saw the nagware screen, I gave up and uninstalled and went with something simple and free: Notepad++.