Long term, it’s hard to imagine Webflow will allow other competitive offerings to use their acquired industry flagship animation library? That would of course be interesting but certainly to their benefit to pull the plug in such cases.
Webflow said that the existing license pricing and terms isn’t changing. I’m sure Pinegrow is going to look closely at everything, but I don’t anticipate any changes in the Interactions module or licenses.
It may never become an issue, current verbiage surrounding it seems safe, though with acquisitions it’s not uncommon for things to change drastically with time. Regardless, amusing that Pinegrow Interactions is now powered by a Webflow product.
Beyond assurances in the linked blog post, we asked our contacts at Greensock for clarification on the longterm availability of GSAP as a library. Will let you know, once we receive a reply.
In general, Pinegrow Interactions consist of three parts:
GUI
Pinegrow’s run-time library that translates interaction data attributes into animation library calls
Greensock animation library
This separation would allow us to plug in a different animation library, in case GSAP is no longer available. But, we are not there yet and there is no indications of this happening any time soon.
Just heard back from Jack Doyle, the Greensock founder, and he reiterated their long-term commitment to keeping GSAP open and honoring all existing deals.
Looking forward to “Pinegrow Interactions PGIA” including ScrollSmoother, SplitText, MorphSVG, DrawSVG, Inertia, Physics, etc., as part of the visual editor by sometime mid tomorrow.
“Prohibited Uses” means any implementation and/or use of GSAP Products in tools that allow users to build visual animations without code that encourages, induces, or materially assists in creating a solution that competes with Webflow’s visual animation building capabilities.
“Competitive Products” means any software, tool, or service that enables users to create, edit, or manage animations through a visual interface or builder similar to Webflow.
Yeah, “free” We are waiting for clarification from the GSAP team on this. Will update once we hear back. Webflow cutting off competitors was our main concern with GSAP acquisition and at that time we were assured that it won’t happen. Well… let’s see what they say now.
Our contacts at GSAP / Webflow assured us that existing agreements will continue to be honored. This means that nothing changes for Pinegrow Interactions. That said, despite GSAP going free, it remains a paid license for us and it does not include previously bonus plugins.
With the recent acquisition of GSAP by Webflow and the updated license terms, I wanted to gently raise a thought: maybe it’s time to consider alternatives to GSAP for Pinegrow Interactions?
The new license explicitly restricts the use of GSAP in visual no-code animation tools that might compete with Webflow. While Pinegrow may not be directly affected right now, this introduces a legal grey zone, especially as Interactions continues to grow as a powerful visual animation feature.
There’s also a potential risk for Pinegrow users (grey zone again): anyone using GSAP-based exports in a commercial product could unknowingly violate the license terms, particularly if their project resembles a nocode or visual tool. That’s not something most users are even aware of, and it could create friction or confusion down the line.
This might be a great opportunity to lean into open, independent alternatives. Anime.js (for timelines, staggers, easings) and Popmotion (for physics-based interactions like drag, inertia, springs) could replicate most of GSAP’s functionality, with the added benefit of MIT licensing and full legal clarity. A unified UX for both would keep the Interactions panel clean and intuitive.
I’m sure the community would be happy to support this shift, whether through testing, building transition templates, or just offering feedback. It would also strengthen Pinegrow’s position as an independent, developer-first tool in a market moving toward increasing platform lock-in.
Just something I’ve been thinking out loud, and out of appreciation for everything Pinegrow stands for.
My personal opinion is people should instead positively and accurately emphasize and credit GSAP for being the best animation framework since AS2 (nearly 20 years ago) and onward to this day.
No other animation library has been as comprehensive, managed, supported, recurrently compensating for browser specific bugs and deficiencies, continually updated, etc. No similar library is used as part of so many award winning sites or used to facilitate engaging brand awareness by companies as much as GSAP is. Let me emphasize again the fact that GSAP has always been fully and actively supported and updated since its inception.
Jack the founder is a brilliant compassionate person. So I doubt he sold the nearly two decades worth of work and effort he put into GSAP with the intention of seeing it all get dismantled. Even more so knowing what that would then mean to all the customers whom have depended upon his library all these years as the best animation platform.
Would guess instead that he secured his long term intensions for his library during negotiations to ensure GSAP would remain the best animation library available to the web in every regard, to everyone and beyond what it already is. This has been his passion for nearly 20 years and no one has executed it better.
Can’t imagine much changing, instead GSAP should only get better with Webflow’s funding and support. Most people used the previous free version anyway, so for most that is not new. Except now those people and everyone get full access to all the wonderful and powerful GSAP plugins free, even for commercial use.
I continue to look forward for many more great things to come from GSAP. That’s my take on the matter and I look forward to using GSAP through <script> code </script> indefinitely, its been a great and fun ride since the AS2 version.
Keep Coding !
PS: Webflow is moving in all kinds of directions, now with their Cloud they offer users the ability of React, Next, Astro etc.,
I really like this sentiment —
“our vision is for Webflow Cloud to be agnostic across JavaScript frameworks and libraries to ensure developers can work in the tools that best support their use cases”
I hope Piny grows and becomes truly agnostic. It truly could become a dev unicorn if it desires.