Does it have to be? The people this seems to be aimed at are not people looking for open source. They're looking for a replacement for OS X because of issues with the new hardware.

I, for example, develop on OSX or Linux using open source frameworks using jetbrain products like PhpStorm, Pycharm, Datagrip...

I think for most people invested in OS enough to work on a distro (or whatever you call Elementary) it does, yes.

A free software enthusiast might not reach for Sublime as their first choice, but if its what you're used to, and you paid for it, and you like it, I don't see any reason to abandon it other than trying to be a hipster. Surely you've got enough things to figure out during the transition where learning a new editor is just an extra unneccessary step.

I wasn't saying that people who use Sublime won't continue to do so if they switch to a free OS, I was saying that it's not at all surprising that people invested enough in free software to put the OS together would choose a free editor.

I think those people are a minority overall and the fact that we keep investing effort to make those vocal few happy is what keeps Linux on the desktop from reaching a larger audience. Normal people don't care if they can get the source code or not. They might care if it's free in beer, but certainly not that they can look at code they won't understand.

I'm not sure you're seeing the distinction I'm making. I distinguishing between the users of a Linux distro or desktop environment and it's creators and maintainers. The latter are heavily invested in free software or they wouldn't be doing it.

When you say "we keep investing effort" which group are you talking about and what effort? And characterizing the maintainers as a "vocal few" seems so entitled as to suggest a misunderstanding. Want Sublime to be the default editor for a Linux distro? You're probably going to have to start your own.

I don't think I am misunderstanding you. I think the question is what do the Linux maintainers want to achieve. Do they want to build the ideal OS for themselves or do they want to bring Linux to the masses? If they want to make the ideal system for themselves then they obviously should keep doing what they are doing. If the primary goal is to bring Linux to the masses than closed source will have to be embraced more.

I personally don't care much for myself right now, since the OS X laptop + Linux on the server is still working great for me.

I honestly think the religious tendency that some OSS developers/advocates have is holding the whole thing back. As a user I don't care that much if it's OSS. It's nice if it is, but if not it's not big deal for me. Sometimes closed source works better and it's annoying when the OS goes out of its way to direct me towards OSS. For example it would be great if Linux where to point me at the newest Nvidia drivers for my Nvidia graphics card instead of replacing them with some open source drivers. In fact it would be better to not even implement open source drivers for the graphics card and instead spend the effort elsewhere.

Consistency. Most large DEs have their own text editors (Kate, mousepad, Geany?) why not one for Partheon ?

I literally don't know anyone who actually uses their DE-specific editor, though

They're like the BMW turn signals of the free software world. If you spend more than a couple hours a day editing, you use Vim and Emacs.

When I was using KDE I edited scripts and whatnot using Kate. Much later I have upgraded to Vim/Evil but having a good experience out of the box is fine. I also use mousepad in virtual xfce machines quite a lot.