[HN Gopher] Webflow makes GSAP 100% free - plus more updates
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Webflow makes GSAP 100% free - plus more updates
Author : mefengl
Score : 94 points
Date : 2025-05-02 11:09 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (webflow.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (webflow.com)
| Zekio wrote:
| not often you see an acquisition result in something good for
| existing users, and this is a surprisingly good outcome
| SloopJon wrote:
| The obvious question is, what does free mean? Here's the license:
|
| https://gsap.com/community/standard-license/
|
| Basically freeware with express prohibitions on competing with
| Webflow.
| akudha wrote:
| Isn't that fair? What am I missing?
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| It's a land grab that, if GSAP becomes a standard, makes it
| that much harder to compete with Webflow.
|
| For example GSAP will now never make its way into Figma or
| Framer which is a staple of the design workflows of many
| teams. This move by Webflow makes GSAP a line of demarkation
| between Figma-based workflows, Framer-based workflows, and
| Webflow-based workflows.
|
| Any momentum the library might have had is now skewered by
| these limitations which will surely create demand for more
| different animation libraries to exist within other walled
| gardens.
|
| The same happened to Vercel & Next.js which now seems to be
| powering the return of Vite & CSR.
|
| Now that said, I'd never heard of this library until this
| announcement, and I don't know much about its role in the
| javascript ecosystem, but I can't say that the trend towards
| M&A kingdoms in the open source community delights me.
| johncoltrane wrote:
| FWIW, sub-5kb banners were probably the only Flash projects
| that didn't include GSAP before we collectively jumped
| ships to JavaScript and CSS for animation on the web. It
| was everywhere.
| anon7000 wrote:
| I mean, don't framer and figma also have loads and loads of
| features which you can't import into other tools?
| robertoandred wrote:
| GSAP is already a standard and Next has always done CSR.
| xnx wrote:
| Always cool to see more free stuff, but about the only animations
| I want to see on the web are from https://ciechanow.ski/
| dleeftink wrote:
| It's not just for Web though, but a really nice approach to
| authoring motion graphics in general. Motioncanvas is also
| worth a mention in this space[0].
|
| [0]: https://motioncanvas.io/
| kbaker wrote:
| GSAP - A wildly robust JavaScript animation library built for
| professionals [https://gsap.com]
| XCSme wrote:
| I keep hearing about it, but I've never used it. Why would I
| use it over https://animejs.com ?
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| I only discovered GSAP the other week, very quickly solved a
| complex animation problem and walked away quite impressed.
|
| Now I'm looking at AnimeJS and my mind is properly blown,
| looks even better.
| saelthavron wrote:
| Serious question, is this a joke? I just see a black screen
| when I go to the site. I refreshed multiple times. Cleared
| cache. Just a black screen.
| moritzruth wrote:
| You have probably disabled WebGL in your browser.
| ZachSaucier wrote:
| GSAP is a bit more robust than anime.js. Over the years anime
| has been adding more functionality and changing its syntax to
| be more like GSAP's. They're both solid libraries though
| pier25 wrote:
| Amazing how far TweeLite has come. It was probably my most used
| dependency in Flash projects back in the day.
|
| Jack, if you're reading, I'm sorry I made fun of the green sock
| brand back in the Kirupa days!
|
| (GS in GSAP stands for Green Sock)
| low_tech_punk wrote:
| I hope this is a reaction to Framer's rapid development in Frame
| Motion (https://motion.dev/). Webflow and Framer are competing as
| site builders, so giving the animation library to everyone is
| like Meta giving out React.
| ayhanfuat wrote:
| I'd say it is too little too late. Motion already has the
| lion's share and anime.js is another strong open source
| alternative. GSAP was quite big in its day but why would anyone
| invest in it today? Also Motion is no longer part of Framer.
| rtcode_io wrote:
| Yeah, no! GSAP is not open-source - they can pull the rag on you
| anytime. No need for drama when we can find/generate
| alternatives.
| peteforde wrote:
| You're free to use/do as you wish, but GSAP is a remarkably
| powerful library that benefits from two decades of very smart
| people optimizing it.
|
| It's very typical for someone to look at something that is only
| 95% perfect and declare that they could replace it in a few
| days or weeks, while simply refusing to learn from history (or
| Joel Spolsky's warnings against the big rewrite).
| azemetre wrote:
| No. As an industry we need to start consolidating on open
| source tooling, we see what happens when a company breaks
| away from open source licenses: it hurts consumers at their
| detriment.
|
| Your quote has no bearing in this context. We aren't talking
| about rewriting our projects, we're talking about purposely
| choosing open and free tools.
|
| Also GSAP isn't even the leading animation library in JS
| ecosystem, thankfully.
| irq-1 wrote:
| Check out Lottie for animated SVG: https://lottie.github.io/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottie_(file_format)
| kotg wrote:
| Lottie handles a different usecase. Lottie is used to port
| animations from after effects to the web as an svg animation.
| For this Lottie will use a static json file which is generated
| beforehand. It uses a quite complex structure and is mere
| impossible to read as a human. Making dynamic manipulations not
| feasible.
|
| For dynamic animations gasp is great as you just code the
| animation in js making it a perfect fit for the web. The
| creation process can be quite cumbersome though.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Rive is better in my experience, much more performant and a
| nice editor to go along with it.
| icemelt8 wrote:
| Who here is old enough to know that Greensock was actually a
| flash library?
| kabes wrote:
| Thanks for reminding me I'm getting old
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| Other fun animation sites:
|
| https://svgartista.net
|
| https://animejs.com
|
| https://animate.style
|
| https://animista.net
|
| LLMs are pretty good at this stuff too - just ask the LLM to use
| one of these resources when making your thing.
| nikisweeting wrote:
| We loved GSAP and wanted to combine that style of rendering with
| an event-driven programming model with redux so that we could
| pass animation events from a backend over a websocket.
|
| Also wanted to keep a bunch of animations on different computers
| around the world in sync to within ~30ms. Ended up building this
| library: https://monadical-sas.github.io/redux-time/
| EGreg wrote:
| Strange announcement
|
| Wasn't GSAP already free and open source? I remember seeing it
| years ago!
|
| Is this more capitalism doublespeak?
| peteforde wrote:
| GSAP has long had a free base library with many advanced
| features only available on a paid subscription basis.
|
| While free as in beer is welcome, in a past life I was happy to
| pay to be able to access such a powerful toolkit.
| tanepiper wrote:
| Nice development for the library, I've been using it in
| https://teskooano.space for ThreeJS camera transition - I'll have
| to check out this new stuff too
| exiguus wrote:
| Beside it's not MIT, so no one will use it. Who is using it? Last
| time i looked it up, it was like jQuery for animtion. What do i
| miss about it? Why should i use it?
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(page generated 2025-05-02 23:01 UTC)