> the vast majority (>90%) of devs would rather exit out of that pop-up
Converting just 5% of users to paying customers is considered pretty good for shareware/freemium, so just because you saw a lot of people using the trial does not mean it is unsustainable. I have no idea how much the developer of Sublime Text makes, but considering that they have been around since 2008 I would assume it's definitely sustainable.
Yeah, but it's generally the kind of money that only allows having a mom-and-pop store. 1-2-5 employees, that's it. If you have a bigger initiative, you can't do it.
Instead, Mega Corp just buys you out when you burn out after many years of development, we see this happening regularly.
In general I think you are probably right. Many developer tools are small projects that can be developed by a single person, and it seems they often struggle to grow into to a bigger company. (I've experienced this struggle myself. For me, the problem was not lack of money)
On the other hand, I think Jetbrains shows that it is absolutely possible to build a huge company that sells nothing but developer tools.
There are also a bunch of mid-size companies that sell developer tools. I'm pretty sure there's more than 5 people at Navicat, Hex-Rays, or Panic, but I'm not sure how big these companies actually are.
Converting just 5% of users to paying customers is considered pretty good for shareware/freemium, so just because you saw a lot of people using the trial does not mean it is unsustainable. I have no idea how much the developer of Sublime Text makes, but considering that they have been around since 2008 I would assume it's definitely sustainable.