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Comment by vertnerd | Hacker News Reader

I used Desmos quite a bit as an instructional tool for high school math. They are funded through relationships with several companies, but most notably the standardized testing industry, which uses it with their online tests.

Over ten years before Desmos launched, there began an open source project called Geogebra (https://www.geogebra.org/). Geogebra remains open source to this day and offers a similar suite of applications and calculators, both online and in app form.

Over the years I have also used Geogebra as an instructional tool in both my math and physics classrooms, producing dozens of apps, simulators, and gizmos: https://www.geogebra.org/u/mrdathhs

Geogebra excels at creating mathematical simulations. One of my favorites was this real-time satellite orbit calculator: https://www.geogebra.org/m/UEynuRnG

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I, too, use both Desmos and Geogebra in my classroom. One of my favourite things about Geogebra is the ability to export to tikz. It can save a lot of time when making complex geometry problems while keeping things nice and neat in your latex file. I also like using the Geogebra 3D AR app to get kids to see the different ways planes intersect, and what a parameterized solution “looks like” in a 3x3 system. It makes for a lot of “aha” moments.

On the other hand Desmos is quick, easy to use, and looks nice. The test-mode app works well on phones and the College Board will be using it for their AP exams this year, so they must be doing something right. Their new 3D apps look promising but I haven’t played with them much, yet.

Both tools have their place, but my heart is 100% with Geogebra.

Sadly this isn't really Free Software: https://www.geogebra.org/license

Open Source only for non-commercial use is a contradiction in itself.

They call this out in their license explicitly

> Please note that GeoGebra as a complete software program would probably not be considered "free" software according to the definition of that term which is used by the Free Software Foundation. This is because the restrictions on commercial use that apply to the GeoGebra installers, web services and language files add-ons might be seen to be a restriction on the software as a whole (thus making it "non-free"), even though the GeoGebra source code is made available under the GNU General Public License without restriction. You can rest assured that our license terms fully respect all existing licenses from third parties (including the GNU General Public License and all Creative Commons variants) and have been checked by an experienced law firm.

Note that "the GeoGebra source code is made available under the GNU General Public License without restriction"

I don't see how this is a contradiction in itself. It is very similar to dual-licensing for commercial use.

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