Aside from the obvious alternative of "personal use," are you really surprised that people aren't always in full compliance with their EULAs?

I've found that I pay much more attention to the terms of use for projects supported by smaller teams -- it's hard to feel like I'm ripping off a giant company like Adobe, but I have a hard time telling a small shop basically "HA! Thanks for trusting me stupid, good luck developing your great product with no money."

I buy every piece of software that I find I love and use almost everyday. For me this has become JetBrains and Atlassian products. I love their stuff.

In response to the post topic, I don't use Sublime. It's really good, definitely prefer a real native application over Atom. I do wish it was open source and the author still sold it. I hate using software where there's a sole author and if he gets hit by a bus, it's up in the air what happens next.

I use PyCharm and Vi in my workflow. I've always found I use two editors. One more focused on my programming at hand, and another for general files to reference, notes and so forth.

So when I remote into a server, it's Vi again. I like PyCharm because it has a Vi mode and everything just works. If you're using Python at least, it's a top tier environment to work in.

That's reasonable, but particularly in a business context, if Photoshop is helping you make money then Adobe deserves your money as much as anyone else.

Not to mention that if you're a startup and you plan to grow into a large company or get bought by a large company (i.e. all startups) you are going to have to get your house in order at some point.

Actually, it's more 'strict' than that:

"Sublime Text may be downloaded and evaluated for free, however a license must be purchased for continued use."

Personally, I was happy to purchase a license because I think it's a great application, but I admit that it's on the pricey side.

"must"

They don't incentivize purchasing in any other way than displaying a popup reminder once a day. It's a fully-featured product without the license, so there's not much motivation to buy it unless you view the purchase as a donation of sorts.

Most of the people I know have never bought a Windows license for their desktops.

Heck, TBH, the only people I know personally that have licensed windows copies have them on their laptops. (and I know plenty of people who use Windows).

Why would it surprise you that people use sublime in non-compliance with its EULA?

Though, since it's just nagware, I doubt most people really care.

Personal projects, coursework in school.

I also have zero doubt that people have been using it for professional purposes in violation of the license.