JSXGraph: Dynamic Mathematics with JavaScript | Hacker News Reader

JSXGraph: Dynamic Mathematics with JavaScript

jsxgraph.org

94 pointsmkl21 comments

I started a minimal alternative to this that is a lot lighter (JSXGraph is 180kb/700kb gzip/plain, vs Vector Graph's 3.5kb/8.6kb gzip/plain). My library is also a lot more limited, but in exchange I also believe it's easier to define simple usecases:

https://vector-graph.com/

What do you HN think about the licensing? (AGPL || commercial) I believe it's the kind of library that, once finished and made popular, it can receive many support questions. Also for the kind of people who might use it, $19 is nothing so I'm thinking of charging more. One-time fee only for sure, I wouldn't have this kind of library any different for sure.

PS, sorry about hijacking the thread, I saw JSXGraph a while back and still decided to create Vector Graph since I wanted something like MathJax => Katex but for vector graphics.

At $19/pop, why bother? I seriously think you should 100x that. If you aren't familiar already, search around for patio11's thoughts on charging for software (search term: "charge more")

I want to cater for "random blogs" ($10~$100), maths or physics blogs/websites ($100~$1000) and other usecases like teaching startups ($1000-custom) so for that I started at $19. The thing I'm unsure about is how to slice those tiers properly, if all I have to bargain is the license.

You can easily double the price. I'd limit the amount of support/feature requests that includes so heavy users will have to pay more :D

Thoughts on the license:

* as others have already said, it's way too cheap. $19 is an amount that's going to be annoying to get expensed in most decent-sized companies. Also consider how much it will cost to defend your rights, should a company use the software without paying.

* there's no specific detail about what paying for the license actually GETS a user beyond being allowed to "use" the library.

* AGPL is tricky for browser-based stuff: does serving unminified source count as "making source available"?

Middleware/devtools/components can be kinda profitable as a niche but you really have to hit a spot with where people who're weak at one thing is willing to pay for it.

Also as you mention elsewhere there's a big disconnect between those who provide a non-profit thing (some Professors page) vs f.ex. a teaching company.

I think the sanest way to approach this is to have 3 tiers with an AGPL version available where you offer support on a by-the-hour basis for some price with a lower rate for non-commercials (#1) and a higher for commercial ones (#2).

And finally a non-gpl commercial license on a SUBSCRIPTION basis that includes X number of support tickets per year. (People really won't pay or sometims even upgrade to new versions anymore most of the time and the support/price ratio can get bad)

For static images like this Tikz is a whole lot more powerful and about as simple. Possibly slower to build, but people making mathematical images probably use Latex/Tikz already. The thing about JSXGraph is it makes dynamic interaction really easy.

I think your licensing makes Vector Graph a non-starter for many purposes, including mine (education). AGPL just isn't usable for us, and any commercially licensed thing makes it too complicated.

Why does commercial license make it too complicated? Don't you already basically pay for everything that is no software related without a fuss? It'd be basically the same here

(I'm genuinely curious whether it's legal, or financial, or red tape-ish in the company, or why)

Red tape I guess. Even office supplies are more complicated than they should be, especially things not available through "preferred suppliers". Commercial software licences are more complicated again, because the powers that be want to make absolutely sure that the licence isn't violated, so there are hurdles to even purchasing a licence, then more hurdles tracking which machines/people have access to it. We buy specialised commercial software when the need is great and the alternatives are poor/absent, but it's a mission every time.

> What do you HN think about the licensing?

My immediate thought when I read your post was GPL or GTFO, so I guess it's fine ;)

I think interactivity is a big point in favor of JSXGraph. Maybe you can offer this as an additional (optional) module?

Shameless plug: I recently mentored a GSoC student who built a beginner-friendly graphing library on top of p5.js. His aim is to make it easier for educators to create manim-quality math visualizations that are interactive. Check it out!

https://medium.com/processing-foundation/p5-teach-teaching-m...

https://github.com/two-ticks/p5.teach.js

https://p5js.org/

„ JSXGraph is released under the LGPL – Lesser GNU General Public License – and the MIT license.“

What is the benefit of doing this? Why should I use it under LGPL if I can use it under MIT?

Initially, JSXGraph has been released under LGPL. Later on users wanted it to include it into ebooks and complained that LGPL would not cover that case. We - the JSXGraph developers - are no legal experts and simply added MIT.

Question to JSXGraph creators; I see that it's stated as "Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union", so how is development of the library being funded? Is it related to academia? Are there professors and students developing it? It seems like a very complex and advanced piece of software that required thousands of hours to be created, so I'm curious who/how created it.

JSXGraph was part of the European Erasmus+ program ITEMS (https://itemspro.eu). Aim of that project (and related projects where JSXGraph is / was included) is to research on "digital learning" in STEM subjects. The technical focus was on including JSXGraph in moodle courses with the question types STACK and formulas. For this and for certain mathematical topics, JSXGraph has been adapted through out the project.

JSXGraph has been started as a seminar at the University of Bayreuth in 2007. The list of developers is given in the copyright section of the source code, e.g. https://github.com/jsxgraph/jsxgraph/blob/master/src/jxg.js. After the students have left the University, the core developer team is much smaller. Luckily, meanwhile the user community is increasingly providing improvements and bug fixes.

> Note: none of the ids are necessary, but we add them because it's nice.

I would advise against this. Good code examples for getting started should include only the bare minimum to get going, nothing more. Nuance and additional options should be left to the details pages, not the introduction. Defaults have a very strong influence on how people use products and the same holds for code samples.

Sorry you mixed my project (in a sibling thread) with JSGraph in the global thread; they are actually being used for the script to generate all those images with the proper names! I'll try to remove them if possible, but otherwise change the statement from "because it's nice" to something closer to reality

You've answered my question and explained why I couldn't find that text on TFA or even their entire domain.

FWIW, with the context I would say that I'd find that example quite hard to parse without the IDs (or at least a comment), unless you changed it to have each graph next its own code.

For anyone reading this confusing subthread in the future, here's a permanlink to your post that the parent was replying to:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28715868

I upvoted because I agree with the general sentiment, but I can't find the specific example you're talking about. Have you got a link for context?

I’ve been waiting for something like this ever since react-vis faded away. There’s a strong need for a declarative charting framework. Looking forward to trying it out!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com