GreenSock

Please read my post Licensing: “Free” != Better to understand why I firmly believe the GreenSock licensing model serves you and the rest of the community better than an MIT (or similar) license would.

The “No Charge” license that comes with most of the GreenSock classes is perfectly sufficient for most projects, but corporate Club GreenSock memberships come with a special license that permits usage in commercial applications/components/web sites for which you charge multiple end users a usage/access/license fee. How do you know whether or not you need the special license? Here are some guidelines:

The basic rule of thumb is if multiple end users are charged a fee for your product, you need the special license that comes with a corporate Club GreenSock membership. Otherwise, you don’t.

Why Invest in the GreenSock Platform?

• Performance – The GreenSock tweening platform (TweenLite/Max and TimelineLite/Max) outperforms most (if not all) other full-featured engines out there, often by a wide margin. See for yourself at http://blog.greensock.com/tweening-speed-test/. Or create your own benchmarks. Some customers have reported a 50% performance improvement when they switched to using TweenLite. This had a direct impact on the sales of their product and the perception of their brand.
• Money & Time – Well over a thousand hours have been spent creating, optimizing, enhancing, testing, documenting, and supporting the suite of integrated classes that make up the tweening platform. Sure, you could take a stab at building your own, but there are many “gotchas” that are likely to pop up along the way, plus you’ll have to worry about maintaining, optimizing, testing, and documenting the code, and then train staff and new hires to use it. Using the GreenSock platform not only saves you all that development time, but the huge user base and support forums are there to help get your questions answered. With all the time savings, you can get your product to market faster.
• Engineering – The GreenSock platform has been built in a way that makes it easy to plug in exactly what you need for your project instead of taking a “cram everything into one class” approach. TweenLite is only about 4k and is perfect for 90%+ of the tweening challenges you’ll face. Many features can be added by simply activating a plugin. And if you need additional features, step up to TweenMax. TimelineLite/Max deliver unprecidented sequencing and grouping capabilities in an intuitive, flexible, and powerful way. OverwriteManager can be used to have fine-tuned control over how and when tweens of the same object handle overlaps. And all of the tweening classes are built in AS2 and AS3 for your convenience. Most other tweening engines only come in AS2 or AS3 flavors, not both.
• Popularity – Because TweenLite/Max are so popular in the Flash community, members of your development team are probably already familiar with it, so time isn’t wasted learning a new syntax or API. Even if they’re not familiar with it yet, there are plenty of tools on the site to make learning easy. You also benefit from the community’s involvement – with so many people using the code, any bugs or inconsistencies quickly bubble to the surface. Some fantastic suggestions come from the wealth of knowledge out there too.
• Business-Friendly License – Many open source licenses require that if you use their code in your application, you must share your entire application’s source code with the community as well. Yikes! That’s not the case with GreenSock’s licensing model. Read Licensing: “Free” != Better for more information about why the GreenSock licensing model serves you better.
• Bonus Plugins & Classes – Your corporate Club GreenSock membership gets you access to useful classes and plugins like “motionBlur”, “transformAroundPoint”, “transformAroundCenter”, “dynamicProps”, as well as TweenProxy, TweenProxy3D, and LiquidStage. You also get access to the SVN repository for the main tweening classes, as well as update notifications.

FAQ

1. Did the license recently change? I thought the code was completely open source and free.
   No, this is not a recent change. However, I have tried to do a better job of clarifying the terms since about version 7 of TweenLite.
2. How Much Does It Cost?
   There are 4 different corporate levels based on the number of developers that will have access to the code, all of which come with a license to use the GreenSock tweening platform and the bonus classes in commercial applications/sites. Please see the Club GreenSock page for pricing details.
3. How Do I Get a License?
   Just sign up for a corporate Club GreenSock membership at the level that corresponds to the number of developers in your organization. That’s it! If you prefer to use a different payment method, just contact us.
4. For how long must I maintain my corporate membership?
   As long as your product is being actively sold/licensed. The commercial license is tied to your corporate membership, so when it lapses, so does the license.
5. If I use the code in more than one product, do I need more than one membership?
   No. The commercial license that comes with corporate Club GreenSock memberships applies to an unlimited number of products that your organization develops/sells (see the terms of the license for specifics). Please be sure, however, to get the appropriate membership level based on the number of developers in your organization.
6. When determining the appropriate membership level, do I need to include only full-time developers? What if my company doesn’t have any?
   You must include any freelancers, consultants, subcontractors, etc. in addition to full-time developers.
7. Can I redistribute the code with my application?
   Yes, you can redistribute the tweening-related classes as long as the source code files haven’t been altered and end users agree to honor the terms of your license agreement with GreenSock, meaning they cannot resell the code or circumvent the license or copyright in any way.
8. I don’t want to pay annually. Can I pay a higher one-time fee for the membership and not have to renew it?
   Absolutely. Click the “one-time fee” link next to the “subscribe” buttons on the Club GreenSock page.
9. Who do I talk to if I have questions?
   Just e-mail questions@greensock.com with questions.

10. What if I develop a commercial product for my client who will be the one selling the product? Who needs the corporate membership?
    This is admittedly a gray area, but to make it easier on GreenSock customers, the policy is that the development company needs to maintain a valid corporate membership. If, for example, Company A develops a swf-based application that uses TweenLite/Max and sells it to Company B who will be licensing it to end users, Company A must maintain a corporate membership. Company B would not be required to have a corporate Club GreenSock membership. If, however, Company B prefers to maintain a membership instead, that is perfectly acceptable as long as it wouldn’t reduce the club level, meaning if the development company has 20 developers ($1,500/year membership) and Company B has 1 developer ($150/year membership), it wouldn’t be fair to circumvent the intent of the membership license agreement by Company B getting a single developer membership. They’d need to get the 20-developer level membership.
11. Why Not Give the Code Away for Free?
    I firmly believe this licensing model ultimately delivers a better end product and serves the community better. Please read my post Licensing: “Free” != Better to understand why.