plot.ly and free software

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On Wed, 2013-12-04 at 13:45 -0800, Matt Sundquist wrote:
> We've tried our best to make the product easy to use, simple to get
> started on, and the best possible product for users.

Be honest. Use plain and honest language. You're trying to be a
salesman here and you're talking like a corporate boss, weaseling your
way around words. You are explicitly not addressing the question I am
directly asking: why won't you let people run plot.ly themselves? 

In what follows, I will not mince words: the biggest problem I see
from plot.ly is that it does not respect your users' freedom, because
it ultimately ties them to your server. You grant them scraps of
freedom by letting them get the data and the generated plots but take
away control of many aspects of the creation and manipulation of the
plots.

Is tying your users to your server without a possiblity of letting
them run the code yourself really the best possible product? Of course
not, your users could get a much better product if you also gave them
a chance to run the code themselves. This better product is not
impossible, since we have examples of people following this business
model: gitorious, identi.ca (another Montréal startup, by the way) and
Rhodecode come to mind. You might even benefit from leveraging a
community of free hackers helping you with your code.

>       * We don't charge for public graphs or storage, and have free
>         use of the API for making public graphs.

But only limited. Your ToS say,

    Without limiting any other section of these Terms, you agree not
    to: [...] use automated scripts to collect information from or
    otherwise interact with the Service;

    ( https://plot.ly/tou )

which really forbids one of the most common things people want to do
with data and plots: grab lots of different datasets and automatically
create a plot for each of them. This is an important freedom you're
explicitly taking away. And indeed, it is difficult to grant this
freedom as long as you tie people to your server, because it increases
your server load. Let your users bear that load if they want to.

>       * If anyone wants to export their data, download graphs,
>         scripts, or data to store them, etc., they definitely can.

This is fine, the data and the scripts can be downloaded, but
ultimately problems will be faced when your server goes down, as it
has, and as it will again. Or worse, if your company disappears, like
many others have. As long as you are peddling non-free software, you
do not give users "the best possible product".

- Jordi G. H.