It's not fully FLOSS but double licencing your library GPL and commercial license is another business model, and it seems to be working fine for companies doing this.
Based on my personal experience: The reason why is probably because of the poorly documented, unstable spaghetti code their public libraries consist of.
Which confirms GP's original idea. There's a fine line between an API that is full-featured and one that can be learned in an afternoon. Plotly is easy to work-through. But if you're aren't comfortable digging through its source code the documentation won't help you. Furthermore, it seems like their support / hosted solution is less for hackers in need of a helping hand and more for completely non-technical users that won't touch JS with a ten foot pole.
Yeah well - looks like we disagree. :)
- Plotlys api is def. not full featured - more like a proof of concept (unless you are building generic 2d plots).
- If you can’t use the api without reading the sourcecode: the api is not documented.
- The 3d libraries only work with the simplest use cases. Its pourous, unstable and inconsistent. Like a poc or alpha.
I am a “technical user” and its bc. of projects like Plotly I try to avoid js (pole or not).