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Launch HN: Activepieces (YC S22) – Open-Source Zapier Alternative

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Launch HN: Activepieces (YC S22) – Open-Source Zapier Alternative

#11

Post by ashrafsam »

vishalchandra wrote: post #8

MIT license builds the trust to use it and contribute to it, or at least use it freely. But that also enables someone to use your software as a starting point for their own competing SaaS solution. Which is what encourages companies to at some point of time shift to a BSL license, as you might also at some point of time. The goal is of course to build Enterprise features which are hard to replicate for others, but th…

We saw some evidence that companies will prefer to work with the original developers for their own product's hosting, but I'll keep working on improving my understanding to the open source ecosystem. Very interesting thoughts.

Re: Launch HN: Activepieces (YC S22) – Open-Source Zapier Alternative

#13

Post by ashrafsam »

edotrajan wrote: post #6
katsura wrote: post #3

Considering that another open source alternative [0][1] was posted just a few days ago, how does this compare? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34610686 [1] https://trigger.dev/

I believe trigger is more focused on devs while this is more focused on others

Yes, this! Trigger.dev lives in your code, we offer a visual flow builder, more like Zapier.

Re: Launch HN: Activepieces (YC S22) – Open-Source Zapier Alternative

#14

Post by sgarland »

I'm admittedly not at all familiar with typeorm (not really great at Node either for that matter), but a few questions:

What kind of testing have you done on app/DB performance under heavy load?

Why are you indexing nearly the same thing thing twice in the AppConnection table? [0]

What kind of column is your pkey, as defined in BaseEntity? [1] It says String, but AFAIK that's not a Postgres type.

Excited to see more work in this space!

Disclaimer: I'm a DBRE at Zapier.

[0]: https://github.com/activepieces/activepieces/blob/main/packa...

[1]: https://github.com/activepieces/activepieces/blob/main/packa...

Re: Launch HN: Activepieces (YC S22) – Open-Source Zapier Alternative

#15

Post by moabuaboud »

sgarland wrote: post #14

I'm admittedly not at all familiar with typeorm (not really great at Node either for that matter), but a few questions: What kind of testing have you done on app/DB performance under heavy load? Why are you indexing nearly the same thing thing twice in the AppConnection table? [0] What kind of column is your pkey, as defined in BaseEntity? [1] It says String, but AFAIK that's not a Postgres type. Excited to see more…

The development began two months ago and we have not encountered any scaling issues yet, as the majority of users self-host. Therefore, our priority was focused on building apps. Is there anything you believe we should consider?

You are correct, repeating the same index twice is a mistake. Thanks for hinting at that

We are using nano id (https://www.npmjs.com/package/nanoid) for all entities, It's stored as varchar in the database.

Re: Launch HN: Activepieces (YC S22) – Open-Source Zapier Alternative

#16

Post by mritchie712 »

vishalchandra wrote: post #8

MIT license builds the trust to use it and contribute to it, or at least use it freely. But that also enables someone to use your software as a starting point for their own competing SaaS solution. Which is what encourages companies to at some point of time shift to a BSL license, as you might also at some point of time. The goal is of course to build Enterprise features which are hard to replicate for others, but th…

There's already quite a few options with a BSL, I think it's wise to stick with MIT as a clear differentiator.

Re: Launch HN: Activepieces (YC S22) – Open-Source Zapier Alternative

#17

Post by ensignavenger »

ashrafsam wrote: post #11
vishalchandra wrote: post #8

MIT license builds the trust to use it and contribute to it, or at least use it freely. But that also enables someone to use your software as a starting point for their own competing SaaS solution. Which is what encourages companies to at some point of time shift to a BSL license, as you might also at some point of time. The goal is of course to build Enterprise features which are hard to replicate for others, but th…

We saw some evidence that companies will prefer to work with the original developers for their own product's hosting, but I'll keep working on improving my understanding to the open source ecosystem. Very interesting thoughts.

When I evaluate software, I see having multiple vendors offering to support/host the software as a good thing. After selecting a piece of software I then begin to evaluate vendor offerings. The vendor being deeply involved in the project- such as being the original creator or otherwise being a major contributor, is a huge plus.

Having 100% of a small pie is often worse than having a good percent of a larger pie. Fostering a large Open Source ecosystem increases the size of the pie- even if you have to share some of it.

Of course, any business is a lot of work, whether your software is Open Source or proprietary. Open Source is a great strategy, but it doesn't guarantee success.

Re: Launch HN: Activepieces (YC S22) – Open-Source Zapier Alternative

#18

Post by ashrafsam »

ensignavenger wrote: post #17
ashrafsam wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We saw some evidence that companies will prefer to work with the original developers for their own product's hosting, but I'll keep working on improving my understanding to the open source ecosystem. Very interesting thoughts.

When I evaluate software, I see having multiple vendors offering to support/host the software as a good thing. After selecting a piece of software I then begin to evaluate vendor offerings. The vendor being deeply involved in the project- such as being the original creator or otherwise being a major contributor, is a huge plus. Having 100% of a small pie is often worse than having a good percent of a larger pie. Fost…

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, we are seeing this pattern indeed. I agree that it doesn't guarantee success, we're inspired by open source apps that compete in being better software rather than only privileged as open source.

Re: Launch HN: Activepieces (YC S22) – Open-Source Zapier Alternative

#19

Post by debarshri »

sgarland wrote: post #14

I'm admittedly not at all familiar with typeorm (not really great at Node either for that matter), but a few questions: What kind of testing have you done on app/DB performance under heavy load? Why are you indexing nearly the same thing thing twice in the AppConnection table? [0] What kind of column is your pkey, as defined in BaseEntity? [1] It says String, but AFAIK that's not a Postgres type. Excited to see more…

I wouldn't judge the project on how correctly they are indexing tables.

Rather judge them on the feature parity and overall thesis. All the scaling issues can be fixed in future as they come. You do not have to be ready for cloud scale from day 1.

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