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Licensing Question

portere test
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I wonder if I can use GSAP for free at my company or if we would need to pay for it. 

Since I think I'm the only Dev out ~100 that has ever mentioned Greensock, I doubt the company would pay for it.

I work for Radancy.com. We make custom sub-domain websites for major companies like Disney and Boeing, to help them hire new employees.

Is a website considered a one-off project? I mean, we don't reuse templates or anything. They are custom sites, from the start.

 

Thanks! :)

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Hi @portere welcome to the forum!

 

If you're the only one that will be editing/maintaining the GSAP related code and the websites you've build don't charge users for using the site, there is no need for a license. Of course you'll not have access to the bonus plugins, but you can use the rest for free. Would be cool though if you could show your colleagues what a level up experience you could provide if you include GSAP in the projects you'll build. 

 

Personally I'd build one project with GSAP using the free tools and bought a licence and now I'm a voluntair moderator (how did that happen!? 😝) and loving it! Such a great community here!

 

Also is worth mentioning that what you get with your Club GreenSock membership is a full year of updates in every bonus plugin. After that year every single project that you created will still work (GreenSock doesn't include phone home code in the bonus plugins that will stop working when the license expires), your clients won't be able to update to the latest versions of the bonus plugins but everything will keep working without any issues.

 

I've also include a few topics with more information, if you still want to read some more. Hope it helps and happy tweening! 

 

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Well, I'm not technically the only developer who will be working on each site. Which in itself might prevent me from be able to use it in the first place, as the next person probably doesn't know anything about GSAP, but the follow-up devs are making content updates and fixes over time so do they count as 'multiple devs'?

It's a gray area to me.

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  • Solution

Great questions, @portere. Thanks for wanting to honor the licensing terms. We love serving developers like you. 

 

Basically, if your GSAP-enhanced site/product generates a fee from multiple users (including micro-transactions, subscription fees, etc.), it requires the commercial license which comes with Business Green memberships. So for example, if the site you create has a "members only" section that people must pay to access, that'd require the commercial license. But if you're just doing custom one-off sites that are free for everyone to view/use (even if you charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for the initial one-time development fee), that totally qualifies under the standard "no charge" license. 
 

Our entire licensing model is based on the honor system and a simple number-of-developers pricing structure. We don't burn a bunch of resources hunting down violators. We funnel all of our energy into crafting the best tools we can and relentlessly supporting our users, trusting that the respect we extend to them will be reciprocated. 

 

In terms of how to count developers, it’s based on the number of people who would actually use GreenSock tools. It’s not intended to be a license that gets passed around from person-to-person, like “Hey Sally, can you stop using GSAP for 5 minutes so I can update something?” So if a company has 3 developers who use GSAP from time to time, they should get a license that covers all 3 developers. You can always upgrade later too. 

 

I hope you find that the membership pays for itself literally in one project when you consider all the time it’ll save, the added capabilities and performance you get...and of course that sense of having animation superpowers is priceless 🙂
 

If you want help convincing your boss, maybe check out:

 

 

Let us know if there's anything else we can help with. 

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  • 6 months later...
On 2/5/2023 at 11:14 PM, mvaneijgen said:

Hi @portere welcome to the forum!

 

If you're the only one that will be editing/maintaining the GSAP related code and the websites you've build don't charge users for using the site, there is no need for a license. Of course you'll not have access to the bonus plugins, but you can use the rest for free. Would be cool though if you could show your colleagues what a level up experience you could provide if you include GSAP in the projects you'll build. 

 

Personally I'd build one project with GSAP using the free tools and bought a licence and now I'm a voluntair moderator (how did that happen!? 😝) and loving it! Such a great community here!

 

Also is worth mentioning that what you get with your Club GreenSock membership is a full year of updates in every bonus plugin. After that year every single project that you created will still work (GreenSock doesn't include phone home code in the bonus plugins that will stop working when the license expires), your clients won't be able to update to the latest versions of the bonus plugins but everything will keep working without any issues.

 

I've also include a few topics with more information, if you still want to read some more. Hope it helps and happy tweening! 

 

Thank you for the info, for now I will go with SimplyGreen. And can I update my plan later?

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