On the one hand, it’s a shame that it’s not open-source, but on the other hand, developers have to make a living from something.
I’m pretty sure most people here, at least I hope, who use open source and free software directly money donate to developers. I know of plenty of developers who do get paid writing open source through such donations or via funding, e.g. NLNet or grants. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your statement, are you saying Sublime Text isn’t open source because they believe those ways are not appropriate for them?
I wrote a whole comment in which I mused about the reason why Sublime Text isn’t open-source. However, a brief search found one developer’s answer: They just don’t think that typical FOSS funding is sustainable for their particular project.
FWIW I’m donating every month to CodeMirror author, donates to Vim, etc. I’m not saying they are wrong, nor right, solely that implying (but maybe I misunderstood the comment) that somehow open-source and getting paid are antagonist is IMHO damaging to FLOSS broadly.
That’s a fair point. Still, I think it’s also worth acknowledging that getting paid to develop open-source software can often be more difficult than getting paid for proprietary work. According to Tidelift State of Open Source Maintainer report, 44 % of FOSS maintainers aren’t getting paid for their work but would like to. Interestingly, 36 % of FOSS maintainers are getting some monetary compensation.¹
(I’m responding mostly because I found that survey. Interesting numbers.)
¹ I thought this number would be smaller. Alas, I am a pessimist.
I’m pretty sure most people here, at least I hope, who use open source and free software directly money donate to developers. I know of plenty of developers who do get paid writing open source through such donations or via funding, e.g. NLNet or grants. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your statement, are you saying Sublime Text isn’t open source because they believe those ways are not appropriate for them?
I wrote a whole comment in which I mused about the reason why Sublime Text isn’t open-source. However, a brief search found one developer’s answer: They just don’t think that typical FOSS funding is sustainable for their particular project.
FWIW I’m donating every month to CodeMirror author, donates to Vim, etc. I’m not saying they are wrong, nor right, solely that implying (but maybe I misunderstood the comment) that somehow open-source and getting paid are antagonist is IMHO damaging to FLOSS broadly.
That’s a fair point. Still, I think it’s also worth acknowledging that getting paid to develop open-source software can often be more difficult than getting paid for proprietary work. According to Tidelift State of Open Source Maintainer report, 44 % of FOSS maintainers aren’t getting paid for their work but would like to. Interestingly, 36 % of FOSS maintainers are getting some monetary compensation.¹
(I’m responding mostly because I found that survey. Interesting numbers.)
¹ I thought this number would be smaller. Alas, I am a pessimist.