What I was trying to say is that every tool should be evaluated using 'productivity gain vs cost' framework. It may well be that for some people productivity gains of TextMate vs emacs/vim/other editor are small and therefore paying any price for TextMate is unreasonable, since the alternatives are free.

But in a case where TextMate does yield to substantial productivity gain, "$60 is too much" is a wrong mental model.

Couldn't agree more. The fact that so few developers are willing to pay for good tools is why we end up with tools like Eclipse.

The point is that we all did pay for good tools. We paid for TM1, and TM1 included the promise of a free update to TM2. I already own TM2, see?

Do you really claim that existing commercial IDEs are so much better than Eclipse?

I use eclipse every day and would never defend it against almost any disparagement.

I don't particularly love Eclipse, but I just don't agree that the commercial alternatives are so much better. Which IDE would you recommend yourself?

For java development? I don't have a recommendation really. I've tried Intelli-j and I think it is def. better but at least for my workflow at the paying job, eclipse's notion of project works out much better.

Few people are saying that $60 is too much. Many people are saying, I paid $60 w/ the promise of an upgrade to X. I expect that commitment to be honored.