> Aside: Sublime Text was an unauthorized (and for at least the first few years half-baked) rip-off
This puzzles me though. What "authorization" should Sublime's author have sought?
I don't know why application XYZ would/should need permission/blessing to be compatible with application ABC's plugins.
To me it's just a completely sensible decision; why would the author(s) of application XYZ want to force users to reinvent the while to write a plugin to do Ruby or Javascript or HTML or whatever highlighting, when this work has already been done so many times over?
> In the early days many of them came to complain at us about TextMate bundle items which didn’t work in Sublime.
Well this was certainly exasperating I'm sure. Sorry you had to deal with that.
> In my opinion the Sublime author profoundly missed the point of what TextMate was about and why it was special
Sublime's author has never really engaged the community much like Textmate's author, which is a shame. Though I would have to point out that a small team (both were single-man teams for most of their lives) can only accomplish so much, and I would say that ST's development has greatly outpaced TextMate's. Also I think ST has somebody working full-time on package management stuff now, not sure.
I think it’s unethical to copy an existing program’s features one by one, as precisely as possible, while adding nothing novel. If you want to make software, get your own ideas. Copying something is a lot easier than inventing it for yourself, which requires doing real research.
If you try ripping off large companies, you run the risk of getting sued. But if you do it to a 1-person company, you can generally get away with it. Still scummy.
> completely sensible decision
From a purely selfish “how can I profit without doing my own work” perspective, sure. Same is true of many types of unethical shortcuts in the world.
> ST's development has greatly outpaced TextMate
I haven’t looked in years, but when Sublime was about 4–5 years old (when I last spent some time examining it) this was nowhere close to true.
I would say instead that the man-on-the-street external impression of ST’s development has been faster.
> I think it’s unethical to copy an existing program’s features one by one, as precisely as possible, while adding nothing novel. If you want to make software, get your own ideas. Copying something is a lot easier than inventing it for yourself, which requires doing real research.
I'm not a fan of this argument. We all build upon the work of those who came before us, and usually even the most blatant rip-offs add something.
I'd even argue the opposite: We should copy good ideas. There's no point in re-inventing the wheel over and over again. If we copy good ideas, we can build on them, and we can spend time inventing new things, rather than re-inventing everything just to make sure it's all original.
(And I say this as someone whose work has been shamelessly ripped off multiple times in the past.)
I think it’s unethical to copy an existing program’s features one by one, as precisely as possible
Completely disagree that this is what ST did. Implementing TextMate's bundle/syntaxes APIs != creating a clone.
I'd argue that conceptually, TextMate borrowed at least as much from Emacs and BBEdit as ST did from TextMate.
After all, what was TextMate's raison d'être? It was not some totally new idea. It was a successful iteration of existing ideas. It was lightweight like a text editor, but highly extendable via scripting.
So, it was like Emacs, except not quite as infinitely extendable, but more friendly and had a native OSX GUI interface. And it was like BBEdit, except more extendable. (Correct me if I'm wrong on this -- I used BBEdit a bit back in the day but never dove too deeply into it)
ST iterated further upon TM's ideas and others. Yes, it implemented TM's bundles and syntaxes for compatibility reasons, which I would call a very good thing because why invent those wheels again. Any new entry into an existing software category certainly should leverage the existing ecosystem to the fullest extent possible, unless there is a very good reason not to.
It's been years since I used TM but I think ST's command palette was a big innovation over TM, and more keyboard-friendly. ST's integrated Package Control is also something I don't believe TM has an equivalent for. And ST is of course cross-platform: it's not like using TM is even an option if you're on Windows/Linux.
So I really reject the talk of ST being a "ripoff". Good software should borrow ideas and leverage existing work whenever possible. And it's demonstrably false to claim that ST offered nothing new, or that TM itself didn't borrow very heavily from other editors.
> Aside: Sublime Text was an unauthorized (and for at least the first few years half-baked) rip-off
This puzzles me though. What "authorization" should Sublime's author have sought?
I don't know why application XYZ would/should need permission/blessing to be compatible with application ABC's plugins.
To me it's just a completely sensible decision; why would the author(s) of application XYZ want to force users to reinvent the while to write a plugin to do Ruby or Javascript or HTML or whatever highlighting, when this work has already been done so many times over?
> In the early days many of them came to complain at us about TextMate bundle items which didn’t work in Sublime.
Well this was certainly exasperating I'm sure. Sorry you had to deal with that.
> In my opinion the Sublime author profoundly missed the point of what TextMate was about and why it was special
Sublime's author has never really engaged the community much like Textmate's author, which is a shame. Though I would have to point out that a small team (both were single-man teams for most of their lives) can only accomplish so much, and I would say that ST's development has greatly outpaced TextMate's. Also I think ST has somebody working full-time on package management stuff now, not sure.