
Show HN: Browser-Based Simulation and Modeling IDE - scottfr
https://insightmaker.com
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DonHopkins
It's free and open source! Who are the people behind Insight Maker, what led
to it, and what's the mission?

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DonHopkins
I googled around to connect the dots, and discovered it goes far beyond that:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/605480326/beyond-
connec...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/605480326/beyond-connecting-
the-dots)

[http://beyondconnectingthedots.com/](http://beyondconnectingthedots.com/)

I just bought a copy of the web based e-book -- very nice!

The people behind it are Scott Fortmann-Roe who made Insight Maker, and Gene
Bellinger created [http://systemswiki.org](http://systemswiki.org) !

Who owns Insight Maker? This is a comment from Scott...

I don't want to muddy the waters with Richard, but just to clarify the
ownership of Insight Maker:

1) i personally have full rights and ownership to the simulation code that is
ultimately used in Insight Maker. This is the code I do development on.

2) I release a copy of this software under an open source license that people
can use for whatever they want. This copy is what is currently available on
GitHub

3) This open source copy of the software is used in Insight Maker which is run
by Give Team.

The key point of this setup is that the code for Insight Maker is open source
and anyone can use it. But my copy of the code isn't bound by the open source
license and I can release copies of it under other licenses in the future if I
need to (e.g. if I had a consulting arrangement I could provide the client
with a copy of Insight Maker that they didn't need to publish changes to,
which the open-source license requires).

Here is a cool one:

[https://insightmaker.com/insight/1954](https://insightmaker.com/insight/1954)

The World3 model is a detailed simulation of human population growth from 1900
into the future. It includes many environmental and demographic factors.

Use the sliders to experiment with the initial amount of non-renewable
resources to see how these affect the simulation. Does increasing the amount
of non-renewable resources (which could occur through the development of
better exploration technologies) improve our future? Also, experiment with the
start date of a low birth-rate, environmentally focused policy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World3)

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DonHopkins
Very impressive. I love the storytelling capability, for incrementally opening
up and explaining and even controlling complex models.

