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Sequoia backs Zed

zed.dev

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Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#281

Post by soapdog »

dewey wrote: post #237
toastercat wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sublime Text solved this 17 years ago with the 40-year-old shareware model. It's also faster than Zed, works on Linux/Win/MacOS, and is decently customizable.

They didn’t “solve” it, otherwise it would be a thriving editor that everyone would be using. In reality 70% of the people I see are using Cursor (Subscription), Vscode (Free) or some JetBrains products (Subscription). I only know of some people including myself that have ST for opening large files, where performance matters.

I'm using Sublime Text. I feel that most people using ST are happy with it and been happy with it for a long time, you don't see many posts about it cause most of the userbase does not make using Sublime Text into part of their digital persona like many users of other editors (not speaking as if doing this is a bad thing, but you'll see fans of other editors being a lot more vocal).

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#283

Post by blitzar »

dkdcio wrote: post #206
542458 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint, apparently cursor's revenue is in the 300-400 million range. So it's not wildly inconceivable that you'd do 40m profit (although I too am doubtful).

how much profit does Cursor generate on that revenue?

If I had to guess ... I would say they spend more on Ai tokens than they take in in revenue.

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#284

Post by ben-schaaf »

agos wrote: post #271
ben-schaaf wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

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 gre…

> 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.

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#285

Post by 8fingerlouie »

toastercat wrote: post #99
mccoyb wrote: post #20

I love the spirit of Zed. From the principles to the low-level implementation details, it all screams "good taste". It's immensely interesting as an object of study (the code is great, from GPUI all the way up). Having said that, I don't think an editor should be VC backed. It's the obvious pragmatic choice to get a team together to support a thing, but I'm concerned by it.

Sublime Text solved this 17 years ago with the 40-year-old shareware model. It's also faster than Zed, works on Linux/Win/MacOS, and is decently customizable.

ST is also all but dead.

They switched to a subscription model (3 year licenses are still subscriptions), and since the release of ST4 in 2021, there has been exactly one release with new features (May 2025). All other releases have been bug fixes and "improvements".

I get that developers need to make a living, but 4 years of fixing bugs in your products is probably not what I want to be paying for, at least not when that is the only thing I'm getting. Speaking of releases, they're also usually 6-12 months apart.

I have used ST ever since the first version replaced TextMate for my use (TM2 spent something like a decade catching up to ST2), but I've since switched to Code and Zed (mostly Zed as of late, Code on windows until Zed is ready there).

ST was great back when it was still an actively maintained product, but in recent years (ever since ST2) it has felt like it was mostly on the back burner and other editors have passed it in functionality.

As for VC funding, it has done miracles for Code to have Microsoft sponsor it (and others). Code is currently the editor to beat for anything that doesn't involve opening large files.

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#286

Post by v3ss0n »

Enshitenfication gonna follow.I like the idea that Opensource software should be funed like public infrastructure - not by loanshark VCs.

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#287

Post by awill »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #285
toastercat wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sublime Text solved this 17 years ago with the 40-year-old shareware model. It's also faster than Zed, works on Linux/Win/MacOS, and is decently customizable.

ST is also all but dead. They switched to a subscription model (3 year licenses are still subscriptions), and since the release of ST4 in 2021, there has been exactly one release with new features (May 2025). All other releases have been bug fixes and "improvements". I get that developers need to make a living, but 4 years of fixing bugs in your products is probably not what I want to be paying for, at least not when…

It does look like ST is lost here. They don't know where to go next. But I do like their Sublime Merge product. It's really good.

Re: Sequoia backs Zed

#289

Post by v3ss0n »

airesQ wrote: post #106

Is IntelliJ "bad"? Aren't the reactions here overly negative? This means the company is funded, development will continue, zed will continue to improve. An IntelliJ style license (for example) is an acceptable trade-off from my point-of-view

VC funding and self funded are totally different beast. Self funded are organic and they can follow their own vision , not VC's vision.
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