I wonder why it wasn't this way from the get-go... Oh well, at least I'm actually interested in it now. Can't wait for the Linux version to try it out. Pumped that they did the right thing and open-sourced it so that it actually has a chance of becoming widespread, and more importantly, of sticking around for longer than a couple years.

Good on you, Atom.io devs

At the risk of being too cynical, I suspect that they're open sourcing it because their analytics indicated an adoption rate that wouldn't justify active development. Not sure if this is still the case, but the Atom.io website, at one point, indicated that its price would not be free, but would be competitive with similar products in the market (I'm assuming Sublime Text).

Definitely not (the beta's been great!). We've been discussing this ad nauseam for years and years, with some good points on both sides. We were looking to make it a partially open, paid app when we launched the beta, but after continuing discussions internally the Atom team decided to go the fully open source route.

Yeah, no conspiracy here. Sometimes when people say they're going to have a beta to gather information and make an informed decision, they actually do it.

Who's actually using Atom as their main editor?

edit: Not meant as a hostile remark, seriously wondering how it's going for people who have stuck with atom. I tried it for 5 minutes, but didn't give it a real commitment.

I'd like to try it but I don't own a Mac.

From the FAQ: "At the moment Atom only runs on OS X (10.8 or later). Windows and Linux releases are on the roadmap."