> Especially software they actually use.

And it's not even an expensive specialized software you just use once every few weeks. Sublime Text is literally the first program I start in the morning and the last one I close in the evening. I bought a license in 2011 or 2012 and have used it daily since then. And now I can upgrade for just $30? This is easily the best value-for-money of all the things I ever bought in my whole life

> If software developers don't value software, there is something very wrong with our industry.

Oh, they value it, all right. They just don’t want to buy it, at least not in the customary fashion. They’re more than happy to pay for software using bug fixes, feature contributions, community engagement, or even their own software. Maybe, just maybe, software for software developers isn’t a good product to be sold the way software is usually sold?

The developer giving free licenses to big contributors is a very solid plan. It's an inexpensive way to reward the most valuable members of your community and keeps them engaged.

However, most people just use Sublime Text. If the software were expensive I probably wouldn't feel so strongly. Looking for and fixing bugs in Sublime Text would be a terrible use of my time. For many of us, $80 represents an hour or two of work.

That's one way to look at it. I prefer to adjust to reality rather than hope to change reality to suit my preferences. If people don't like paying for software, then charging money for software is not something I'm going to waste my time on.