Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Until recently, I used the excellent SubEthaEdit for my text editing needs. It had a lot of very cool features, not the least of which was the ability to share documents via Bonjour or over the Internet for simultaneous editing, and the price was right: Free for non-commercial use.

SubEthaEdit’s latest release, 2.3, changed all that. It’s no longer free for non-commercial users. Rather, it’s $35 for all users. I understand the work that goes into developing an app like SubEthaEdit, and consequently I understand their need to get some cash flowing into the operation. At the same time, there are other good, free text editors out there and it’s hard to justify purchasing one.

But isn’t this a commercial site? After all, I have one of those ubiquitous Amazon links on the right. Don’t I make money from these pages? Well, No. this isn’t a commercial site because I’m not personally selling anything. This is just for my personal amusement and occasional experimentation. That Amazon ad has produced a single-digit dollar amount of revenue since its inception, and if you’re a regular reader of this page, you know that sometimes I may not update it for months. It’s not any kind of serious money making attempt.

So for the time being, I’ve had to say a reluctant goodbye to SubEthaEdit and instead I’ve adopted Smultron as my new day-to-day editor. It lacks the collaboration features of SubEthaEdit, but I suppose that’s the price of free(beer)ness. Onward and upward.