I honestly don't see any reason for Sublime Text to ever be more free than it is. The unlicensed version works as well as the paid version. The only real usability difference is that it asks you about a license every so often. If that reminder starts to annoy you it likely indicates that you are using ST often enough that you should pay for it.
I don't understand why so many developers are willing to pay thousands to upgrade their hardware frequently, but then aren't willing to pay $80 (or $30 to upgrade) once every what, 5 years?, for software that they use in the realm of 30+hrs per week. Sublime text has easily saved me enough time to earn that back.
OP means free as in speech as opposed to free as in beer. He would like the source to be available and to have the freedom to alter or redistribute it.
Sublime is clearly worth the money, but I've been burned dozens of times by non-open-source software suddenly changing business models or getting bought out and then sundowned. On a longer timescale, it seems that open source is the only way to really keep software alive. I wouldn't be surprised if Emacs (or even Atom) outlived every commercial competitor in the field, including all the ones by the big players. And this is especially important with tools you use for your work!
I wish we had a way of collectively and continuously funding open source software. Developers absolutely need to be paid, but it seems that software is better off when it's free.
(With that said, Sublime is one of the few remaining non-open-source applications that I'm more than happy to buy.)
it's not that i ain't willing to pay for its license, its that i prefer it to be free software (the problem is that being free software they'll have to change a lot of things to monetize as much as if it isn't).
about the reasons to be "more free" (as in free spech): collaborative development
I don't understand why so many developers are willing to pay thousands to upgrade their hardware frequently, but then aren't willing to pay $80 (or $30 to upgrade) once every what, 5 years?, for software that they use in the realm of 30+hrs per week. Sublime text has easily saved me enough time to earn that back.