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N8n raises $180M

blog.n8n.io

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Re: N8n raises $180M

#121

Post by bookofjoe »

xienze wrote: post #108
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh, it's open (core) source. And while certain (just a couple of) enterprise features should have been made open to qualify as being called open source, it's very close to that. It is absolutely not open source. The "Fair Source" license that n8n invented has two related qualifications that make it not open source: > You may use or modify the software only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commerci…

> It's not open source if you can't use it professionally or sell work derived from it. Does anyone _really_ use these low/no-code platforms to create products? I was always under the impression that you'd primarily use something like this for "internal business purposes" i.e. little internal utilities that you can't justify spending serious development time on. Which the license lets you do.

This reminds me of a wonderful definition of ownership: You only own something if you can buy and sell it. See: Kindle books/movies "bought" on Apple TV/etc.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#122

Post by knowitnone3 »

lawnchair wrote: post #41
cube2222 wrote: post #21

Kudos to the n8n team! Seems like the focus is increasingly shifting to AI. Question to folks who’ve used n8n extensively, I’m curious, what are your experiences with n8n, and how much does it end up being a web of verbose “visual python” in practice? I’m very much biased here and have a vested interest, because I’ve been working on a new product not far from this space, but much more oriented at technical users (pla…

Using another company's funding announcement to shill your own is lame.

what's lame about it? I read the comments specifically for alternative tools. Often times, commenters provide links to other tools and nobody has ever complained...until you came along

Re: N8n raises $180M

#123

Post by JimDabell »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #98

For me the Math isn’t Mathing. Hiring 50 fairly well paid developers is roughly $15M/year, maybe more if one insists on SV compensation which always seem a bit absurd. $240M total funding is a lot of money. They’ve only been around for about 5 years and probably didn’t start out fully staffed. So they’re basically covered for the next 10-15 years even if they had zero sales ? Having 500 employees won’t speed things u…

Once you hit product-market fit for a SaaS, engineering becomes a smaller proportion of your spending and you start hiring and spending a lot more on sales and marketing. If you know you can earn more than a dollar for every dollar you spend on customer acquisition, you throw as much money as you can at acquiring customers.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#124

Post by JimDabell »

Lutger wrote: post #84
bsnnkv wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what else you and others who make these kinds of comments are looking for from projects like these who are already explicitly and clearly stating that they are _not_ FOSS projects It's as if you don't want source code to be available _at all_ unless it's under a FOSS license

Look at the other comments, one states "Oh, it's open (core) source." Not exactly the fault of n8n, but the confusion is there to clear up. That is all I'm reading into it.

> Not exactly the fault of n8n

They did start out by incorrectly calling themselves open-source, but to their credit they stopped doing that and have been very clear ever since.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#125

Post by nextworddev »

testycool wrote: post #61
nextworddev wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s with the windmill plug? It’s not even the same cateogry

I also prefer Windmill. A category they both fall into is workflow automation. n8n is useful when collaborating with non-coding colleagues.

[flagged]

Re: N8n raises $180M

#126

Post by sneak »

hirako2000 wrote: post #44
cube2222 wrote: post #21

Kudos to the n8n team! Seems like the focus is increasingly shifting to AI. Question to folks who’ve used n8n extensively, I’m curious, what are your experiences with n8n, and how much does it end up being a web of verbose “visual python” in practice? I’m very much biased here and have a vested interest, because I’ve been working on a new product not far from this space, but much more oriented at technical users (pla…

n8n in my experience using it for 2 years now, and compared to similar solutions as there are many doing quite the same thing: it is just a very good product. It's stable. It has a gazillion integrations out of the box and is architectured as a module system so it's easy to create your own. It is very community centric, with community workflows and also integration modules people kindly publish on GitHub. Oh, it's op…

n8n is not open core/open source. it is not free software at all.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#127

Post by JimDabell »

moralestapia wrote: post #65
viraptor wrote: post #20

Shame it's not FOSS. There's still https://www.windmill.dev/ though.

If we're being strict, Windmill is also not FOSS. This is not an argument in favor of n8n.

If you clone the Windmill source from GitHub and build it, that’s AGPL.

If you enable the enterprise feature flag or use the Docker image, the result is source available.

I think it’s fair to call Windmill open source. It’s using the open core model for commercialisation. Just because you publish open source it doesn’t obligate you to make all the code you write open source.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#128

Post by sneak »

bsnnkv wrote: post #36
viraptor wrote: post #20

Shame it's not FOSS. There's still https://www.windmill.dev/ though.

This comment got me digging, n8n actually has a pretty good post-open source license[1] - I'm glad to see more successful examples of this sort of licensing in the wild [1]: https://docs.n8n.io/sustainable-use-license/

The term you are looking for is “source available” license.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#129

Post by bix6 »

adastra22 wrote: post #115
blitzar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it is (nearly) the entire purpose of this forum.

What gives you that impression?

Ever notice all the YC hiring / launch announcements? This is literally an advertising / jobs board for them.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#130

Post by JimDabell »

shrx wrote: post #94
Deukhoofd wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was originally called Nodemation, but the creator thought it was too long, so he shortened it to that, pronounced n-eight-n. https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n?tab=readme-ov-file#what-does-n...

What a stupid naming convention, I'm not surprised it's something coming from the javascript ecosystem. Nodemation would have been perfectly fine.

This doesn’t come from the JavaScript ecosystem. Numeronyms have been in use in the computer industry since before JavaScript existed. “i18n” (“internationalisation”) has been in use since the mid-80s, for instance.
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