Wow, thanks so much! All the way back from the Flash days, huh? Excellent. We love hearing that. We'll keep pressing to make it better, even after a decade. Version 3 is definitely the best ever.
I'd bet that most people who have done advanced animation work [with code] can see exactly what Chris means. I certainly can. There is incredible motion design work that is purely accomplished in code. Certain things are faster and far more flexible in that medium. He's not saying "Design can and should only be done with code". I don't understand why anyone would bash the sentiment expressed in Chris' work. I think it's entirely valid and deserves our respect.
Code is a tool, just like a GUI. Most GUIs just abstract away the creation of the code anyway. If a guy like Chris can leverage code as a tool directly and doesn't need a GUI, more power to him. There are plenty of effects I've created with code that would be an absolute nightmare to try to create with a GUI.
With over 1.6 million sites using GreenSock (and growing fast), I'd say it's gotten plenty of love outside Advertising/Marketing circles ;)
It's widely seen as the go-to animation library on the web...period. Most award-winning sites use it. Chris Gannon is clearly a magician with it. Love his work.
As for the licensing, the codebase is on github and it's free to use in the vast majority of use cases including most commercial ones. See http://greensock.com/why-license/ to understand the "why" behind the model. Hopefully you'll see how it can actually be a very good thing for the community (as evidenced by the decade-plus track record and ongoing updates). But I realize it's not for everyone and that's okay. There are some misunderstandings out there about the license, so I hope folks will take a moment to read that article I mentioned above.
Hm, I don't recall seeing multiple RAFs in that demo. GSAP is all driven by a single one. And yes, I totally agree that nobody should place too much weight on just one performance test. I always advocate people doing their own tests which is why I was wondering if you had one that showed anime matching/exceeding GSAP's speed. No big deal, though. Just curious. Congrats again!
Congrats on the release! You said Anime is equal or better than other JS libraries in terms of performance - were you including GSAP? In my tests, GSAP was significantly faster under stress: http://greensock.com/js/speed.html. Am I missing something? Do you have a test that shows otherwise? I don't mean that to detract from your hard work at all. Clearly you put a lot of effort into this, and I know how hard it is to pack in features and keep performance up and file size down. I applaud the file size achievement.
SCENE MANAGEMENT, PHYSICS, ETC.
GSAP is not meant to be a monolithic, opinionated framework in which you build your entire app/site like famo.us. You can build the way YOU want, and then leverage GSAP to animate pretty much anything JavaScript can touch; CSS properties of DOM elements, canvas library objects, generic objects, SVG, whatever. It's insanely flexible. It solves a bunch of browser bugs and inconsistencies too.
With GSAP, you don't have to keep switching animation tools based on your project. It doesn't try to own the rendering layer like famo.us does. It just makes animating a lot faster, more fun and less tedious.
That's not to say famo.us is "bad" at all - some people prefer their approach and it has its strengths for certain types of projects (I think they're going mostly after mobile app development).
Yes, GSAP has physics plugins (see the docs). Check out the fluid motion of Draggable which (unlike jQuery UI's Draggable) works inside transformed elements and honors momentum and complex snapping rules. http://greensock.com/draggable/
Velocity.js is cool, but it has different goals; it's only for DOM elements and isn't as full-featured as GSAP (runtime controls, sequencing, animating along a path, overwrite management, lag smoothing, synchronized architecture, etc.) Julian did a nice job with it though. More thoughts:
http://greensock.com/forums/topic/9449-new-velocityjs-animat...
LICENSING:
If a client hires you to do a custom project (web site, banner ad, whatever), no special license is needed no matter how much you get paid. The only time you need the license is if you're reselling your product to MULTIPLE customers. That's it. Everything else is free. With this model, a small group of power users who make $ off of GSAP provide a funding mechanism to make it accessible to everyone else and allow GreenSock to provide solid support and continued innovation. Check out the GreenSock forums to see how well-supported it is (and has been for years).
I'd encourage you to give the famo.us, Velocity.js, and GSAP a try and see which feels best to you. Have fun!
Actually, it's even free for most commercial uses too. And no, GreenSock has never sued anyone. The goal has been to keep it highly accessible, hold a trusting posture with users, and have a small funding mechanism that protects it from stagnating like most open source projects.