The benefit of open source is really better plugins. It&#x27;s much easier to create plugins for an editor if you can see the editor&#x27;s source code. This is true for IntelliJ IDEA and Atom in particular. I have been able to create pretty great UIs and other features in IntelliJ plugins from looking at and introspecting the IntelliJ code to see how it was done there.<p>The other benefit is that if the company dies you know you wont have wasted all that effort with the editor because open source editors don&#x27;t live and die at the behest of the company that started them.