Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lime Text: Open Source Sublime Text clone

limetext.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 251 posts

Re: Lime Text: Open Source Sublime Text clone

#131

Post by rthomas6 »

kabdib wrote: post #95
jokoon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60 bucks for an editor is quite expensive I think. There are nice alternative to such an editor. I wonder what features makes sublime text so much valuable...

I'll pay for value. For instance, I've probably sunk $800 into my current editor over the years. It's been completely worth it, and I don't regret a single penny. Another tool (for visual diffing) was about $300, 15 years or so ago. Totally worth it; it's paid for itself many times over. In both cases the open source alternatives were awkward and borderline broken. Sure, I could have saved a few bucks by using them,…

What editor?

Re: Lime Text: Open Source Sublime Text clone

#132

Post by [deleted] »

gabemart wrote: post #49
erikb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose being open source doesn't stop you from giving user licenses for money, though. True, people can just use your program by violating your license. From coder to coder that is way less likely than, for instance, between the movie industry and the movie viewers, though. And being open source, even the violating users might add value to your product by fixing bugs and adding features.

> I suppose being open source doesn't stop you from giving user licenses for money, though. True, people can just use your program by violating your license. I don't follow your argument here. To qualify as "Open Source" rather than "source available", people have to be free to modify and redistribute the source code. So even if you charge for a license, there's nothing to stop the first licensee redistributing for f…

[deleted]

Re: Lime Text: Open Source Sublime Text clone

#133

Post by dragonwriter »

atmosx wrote: post #63
bloke_zero wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty happy with TextMate 2 at this point - pretty regular updates, mature eco system, continuous improvement and its open source.

The TM2 phenomenon is something weird. TM had a huge traction when it was payware. Then it stalled, then it went open-source and everybody started looking for a new payware solution. Apparently some people, still believe the theory that all you need to know about a product is on the price tag , which is absolutely false (e.g. emacs/vim have no price but are exceptional programmig editors, hardly matched by payware so…

> TM had a huge traction when it was payware. Then it stalled, then it went open-source and everybody started looking for a new payware solution.

IIRC -- and I was never a TM user but was following it from the outside -- search for a TM replacement started before the open-sourcing; once TM became popular, people started looking for a cross-platform equivalent (because even lots of people who are primarily OSX users don't do all their editing there) and as the perceptions was that development was stalling, an even more people were searching for alternatives. The open-sourcing was sometime after that.

I don't think ST has been adopted because it is payware (that is, I don't think a significant force in its adoption is a preference for paid over free software), I think its been widely adopted because its features well match what a lot of people are looking for in an editor, and they are willing to pay for it.

Re: Lime Text: Open Source Sublime Text clone

#134

Post by Someone1234 »

trevor-e wrote: post #118
overgard wrote: post #110

I wish they wouldn't attach themselves to the sublime brand. It's not theirs, and it's pretty shady to ride another project's coattails when their intent is essentially to cannibalize it by being sublime-but-free. You can discuss the merits of open source and paying for tools all you want, but basically their goal is to put a man out of business who's made something that a lot of people love, because he has the gall…

I don't think people care so much about how it's 60$. At work that makes little difference to me. The big thing is how this is open source.

> The big thing is how this is open source.

And how does that make a difference? You could already contribute plugins to both to add/remove/alter functionality, so other than a warm fuzzy feeling, what does Open Source add to your productivity?

Re: Lime Text: Open Source Sublime Text clone

#137

Post by Igglyboo »

Someone1234 wrote: post #134
trevor-e wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people care so much about how it's 60$. At work that makes little difference to me. The big thing is how this is open source.

> The big thing is how this is open source. And how does that make a difference? You could already contribute plugins to both to add/remove/alter functionality, so other than a warm fuzzy feeling, what does Open Source add to your productivity?

If something breaks or development stalls or he wants new features and the developer has abandoned the project he can then pick it up himself if he wants.

Re: Lime Text: Open Source Sublime Text clone

#138

Post by dragonwriter »

Corrado wrote: post #47
randunel wrote: post #23

Am I the only one who immediately wondered how Atom was doing when seeing this article? :D

I would love for Atom to make some progress. The last time I tried it I really liked it, however it was way too slow to be useful to me. There was a perceivable delay between when I typed a character and when it showed up on screen. This is a deal breaker for an IDE, IMHO. Then again, it is a really young editor and has a lot of room to grow and mature. So, here's to both Lime Text & Atom. May our text processing fut…

Atom has some performance issues, but they are mostly on opening windows (this is compounded by the fact that Atom really likes to open new editor windows, e.g., for "Open File"). I don't notice the actual editor itself lagging.

Re: Lime Text: Open Source Sublime Text clone

#139

Post by ihuman »

dragonwriter wrote: post #135
james33 wrote: post #108

Isn't Atom the open source Sublime Text clone?

Atom and Light Table seem to be open source editors largely in the same vein as ST (I wouldn't say they are clones).

Isn't Light Table more focused on being an editor-REPL combination than being a text editor?

Re: Lime Text: Open Source Sublime Text clone

#140

Post by xorcist »

gabemart wrote: post #49
erikb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose being open source doesn't stop you from giving user licenses for money, though. True, people can just use your program by violating your license. From coder to coder that is way less likely than, for instance, between the movie industry and the movie viewers, though. And being open source, even the violating users might add value to your product by fixing bugs and adding features.

> I suppose being open source doesn't stop you from giving user licenses for money, though. True, people can just use your program by violating your license. I don't follow your argument here. To qualify as "Open Source" rather than "source available", people have to be free to modify and redistribute the source code. So even if you charge for a license, there's nothing to stop the first licensee redistributing for f…

There has been a few pieces of software distributed in this way over the years. I've always thought there might be something to it, as I myself would find it easier to pay for free software than for non-free.

It's quite popular in the Android space, where many publish source code on github but distribute free software binaries on Play Store for pay. Somehow it doesn't seem to have catched on for desktop software, although I suspect some of the pay-for-support free software is in fact organizations who aren't really interested in the support agreements per se.

Post reply on HN