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.
If I said I knew exactly what I was talking about, I’d be lying. But it’s generally accepted that funding of open-source is not in an ideal state.
Sublime Text is not open-source but it has a sane price and a WinRAR-style trial. I use it because it feels a lot snappier than other editors/IDEs I’ve tried when browsing large files.
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.
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.