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I want to pay for TextMate 2

marco.org

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Re: I want to pay for TextMate 2

#11

Post by elithrar »

calebmpeterson wrote: post #7
burgerbrain wrote: post #4

Paying for a text editor . Boggles the mind.

I've never used it; is it really /just/ a text editor? Edit: to clarify, my use of "just" wasn't meant to be dismissive or diminutive in any way...

> "I've never used it; is it really /just/ a text editor?"

It's not a text editor in the scheme of Notepad or TextEdit; it's an editor for text. That is, it's a tool for programmers, with all the searching, syntax highlighting, and whatnot that goes alongside. Sometimes even writers use it.

What makes TextMate good is that it executes well, and doesn't (at least to me) try to be an IDE. Which is why many of us like it, or at least liked it, before things stagnated.

Re: I want to pay for TextMate 2

#12

Post by devtesla »

Giving TM2 as a free upgrade probably does make a lot of sense to the developers. Textmate is hugely popular, and I wouldn't be surprised if he gets more than enough to finance what he wants to do off of its sales. And by making it free he makes sure that no one has a reason to use TM1 anymore, keeping his userbase unified and easier to handle.

It's also worth mentioning that licences from one discount bundle (MacHeist) will require an upgrade fee, a smart distinction to make.

Buttt, this is a case where he is severely undervaluing his software, which isn't helping in a market where software is already too cheap. The developers are doing less harm to themselves then they are the Mac software community.

Re: I want to pay for TextMate 2

#13

Post by gecko »

I have a lot of trouble understanding this mentality.

I totally get paying when you don't have to in order to support fellow developers. I've got a nice collection of apps on my phone and desktop, all purchased, that I've acquired over the years to support my friends' development efforts. So if Marco wants to help out Macromates, that's fine. More power to him.

But I don't understand this mantra of, "We'll forgive you; just charge everyone." Let's ignore entirely whether that's a contract violation and just focus on whether it's fair.

Zoom back several years to the era Marco's talking about. TextMate 1.0 ships. It's a nice editor--really nice, actually--but it has a lot of rough edges to it. But, Allen promises, buy now anyway; upgrades through version 2.0 are completely free. So a lot of people, including me, slapped down money to buy version 1.0 on this promise. (And in my case, also to support an upstart dev who was daring to take down the 800-pound gorilla of Mac text editors, Bare Bones' BBEdit.)

But that promise never materialized. TextMate got a lot of improvements initially, but there's now a relatively large collection of third-party plugins you need just to achieve parity with the now-native versions of Vim and Emacs that can be had for free.

And in exchange for not shipping anything for literally years, you want to reward him by paying him more?

What am I missing here?

Re: I want to pay for TextMate 2

#14

Post by Nyr »

"Given the value that we get out of TextMate, it’s already grossly underpriced. Please let us give you more money"

The value for you isn't probably the same for all the customers.

Some people make millions from the work of the Apache Foundation for example but others use their web server to run little websites. Some would probably pay tons of money for it, others won't.

I am not saying that a upgrade fee for TextMate 2 will not be fair, but that is solely at the author's discretion.

Re: I want to pay for TextMate 2

#16

Post by alttag »

gecko wrote: post #13

I have a lot of trouble understanding this mentality. I totally get paying when you don't have to in order to support fellow developers. I've got a nice collection of apps on my phone and desktop, all purchased, that I've acquired over the years to support my friends' development efforts. So if Marco wants to help out Macromates, that's fine. More power to him. But I don't understand this mantra of, "We'll forgive yo…

  > I have a lot of trouble understanding this mentality.
Like, say, tipping at a nice restaurant.

You may not like the food, but it seems others did, and they want to demonstrate that to the chef.

Re: I want to pay for TextMate 2

#17

Post by vtail »

I find it depressing that some people in the comments here wouldn't want to pay for a _key tool of their trade_ - assuming they work with texts professionally as programmers, bloggers, designers etc. Even 10% increase in productivity will pay for Textmate license in 10 days, assuming you get at least a minimum wage.

Re: I want to pay for TextMate 2

#20

Post by ary »

Contrast the TextMate situation to that of Sublime Text. Jon Skinner has done an amazing job of shipping something compelling early, updating it often, developing out in the open and giving his customers a good reason to buy the product even though it's still in beta.

Allan Odgaard has made promises as to the quality and ship date of his product, and that's about it (to be fair, there have been 1.x updates). At this point the promise of a free upgrade combined with the boatloads of cash TM1 made are almost certainly what put future product development on perpetual hold. Far from just avoiding that promise, he should have avoided talking about future versions at all.

For me the choice is pretty clear. I finally deleted TM from ~/Applications a few weeks ago and haven't really looked back. Sublime Text 2 isn't perfect, but it is already very close to being everything I need for my day to day development and general editing tasks. Even though it isn't stable, I use it nearly every day, and it just keeps getting better.

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