Hacker News Reader

Comment by franciscop | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com