[TxMt] Suggestion: Licensing options: noncommercial or educational?

[Jonathan Ragan-Kelley]

For whatever it's worth, I also think this would be a great idea.  $50
may not be much for the primary app a professional uses 9-5, but, from
a student/non-profit perspective, it's rather a lot for "just a text
editor."  It's much less than BBedit, but I've always thought their
pricing was insane, and, while I certainly understand the issue of
"feel," I've always believed their pricing to be upheld by emperor's
new clothes hype in the mac webdev community.  And, as a student,
while "feel" still matters a great deal, it's much harder to justify
paying $50 more than jEdit or Emacs or SubEthaEdit when they are all
great editors (with even greater flexibility and power, in the case of
jEdit and Emacs) and you aren't being paid a penny for your work.

I mean, I'm a huge fan of "feel," but it still took me over a year of
heavy use of OmniOutliner -- my all-time favorite app on any platform,
and the greatest single reason I moved from using an iBook as my
secondary/portable platform to using a PowerBook as my sole primary
machine -- before I bought a license of Pro (circa $50).  I'm wicked
and bad and don't support independent developers as much as I should
(I am one, myself, so God knows I understand the value of all these
products), but the reality is that, when you're not only not making
money but just doing your level best not to go into debt
(student/educational), or you will by definition never have enough
money to support your primary goal (non-profit), you cut "optional"
costs wherever possible -- and a $50 text editor is going to be high
on the list.

Above all, I'd like to see TextMate reach the largest audience
possible.  I think that would be great for (1) Macromates/Allan and
TextMate development, (2) the TextMate community and its
open-source/tool development, and (3) the Mac user community, in
general.  I think a discounted or free educational/non-profit license
-- a la SubEthaEdit -- would serve this purpose well.

Of course, I realize my perspective is fairly far to one end of the
spectrum, so take it with a grain of salt.
-jrk

On 4/19/05, David <akda5id at gmail.com> wrote:
> I posted this to the wiki, I think it was missed, and I thought it
> might be good to bring up here anyway for fuller discussion.
> 
> It would be great to have the option of buying a noncommercial or
> student license for TextMate. I bring this up because I would benefit
> (qualifying for both myself), but also I think that this is something
> you should consider because it might bring in more total revenue via
> added registrations you would otherwise not get.