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N8n raises $180M

blog.n8n.io

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Re: N8n raises $180M

#51

Post by bsnnkv »

poly2it wrote: post #40
bsnnkv wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

It's great and all that their business strategy is working out, but anyone looking to use a FOSS solution isn't going to care at all. This is basically just allowing self-hosting of a third-party's cloud, which is an improvement over traditional SaaS, but shouldn't dilute the FOSS label.

> but shouldn't dilute the FOSS label

This is such a strange thing to post in response to a link which states:

> Although n8n's source code is available under the Sustainable Use License, according to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), open source licenses can't include limitations on use, so we do not call ourselves open source.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#52

Post by abrookewood »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #19
nomilk wrote: post #13

147k stars and currently the 38th most starred repo on all of GitHub [0, 1]. Seems odd that a project has so many stars yet is largely unfamiliar to much of HN (corrections appreciated). I asked an LLM if there's ways to detect suspicious starring activity (e.g. if stars were purchased). It suggested checking the project's star history [2] (doesn't appear suspicious). It also suggested the stars to issues ratio. n8n…

They been around for a long time (I was using it back in 2020 i think) but now they are just getting hype by AI. Its not relly AI. Its a no-code platform that has a lot of connections to tools and a few AI nodes. So you can build automations that have a step that uses an AI. But really its more a no code platform for automation (maybe no code is wrong wors and more like visual programming)

Yep, this is my recollection. I'm I remember correctly, they used to be "Like Yahoo Pipes" or something similar. They seem to have (quite successfully) latched onto the AI hype and are now regarded as a visual AI building tool

Re: N8n raises $180M

#53

Post by bsnnkv »

blitzar wrote: post #47
bsnnkv wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

How much equity did they kick back to the devs from the open source era?

As much as I appreciate a good snarky comment, this is a good reminder for contributors to be thoughtful about the licenses under which they contribute code to projects

> Nowhere in any common open license does anyone promise to keep working on their project, much less on particular terms. Any contributor to a permissively-licensed project can license their next contribution however they want. Any steward of a copyleft project with rights to all contributions can, too. Much as you could pick an Apache-licensed project, fork it, and sell your enhanced version under proprietary terms, a project steward can share new work under new terms, as well.

>

> None of this changes the license terms for old releases. Prior versions with MIT or Apache 2 or MPLv2 or what have you in the LICENSE file remain available to use, share, and change under those terms. That includes forking. We see that every time a going-forward relicensing spawns a new one. The reason the new license terms matter for new releases is that those new license terms apply to the diff between the old release and the new one.[1]

[1]: https://writing.kemitchell.com/2023/09/23/Two-Kinds-Relicens...

Re: N8n raises $180M

#54

Post by an0malous »

hannofcart wrote: post #45
mattfrommars wrote: post #23

I have come to realize these drag and drop no code solution are good for low complexity solution. If project scales, it is better to write code. I kid you not, we use another no code solution at work and it was originally meant for PM to create workflows. It came to us the devs to make it and we resent daily working on it. Our life would have been much similar if our workflows had been written in code.

PM (at the next sprint meeting): "So, Matt, for your next story here's this 48000 line code base that I vibe coded for the new vendor interop feature you said would be difficult to implement correctly. Of course this is a standalone page written in some language that I forget. I think Cursor mentioned some animal name... anyway. Can you please put this into our product please?"

I wish I had gone into medicine like my parents wanted

Re: N8n raises $180M

#55

Post by poly2it »

bsnnkv wrote: post #51
poly2it wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great and all that their business strategy is working out, but anyone looking to use a FOSS solution isn't going to care at all. This is basically just allowing self-hosting of a third-party's cloud, which is an improvement over traditional SaaS, but shouldn't dilute the FOSS label.

> but shouldn't dilute the FOSS label This is such a strange thing to post in response to a link which states: > Although n8n's source code is available under the Sustainable Use License, according to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), open source licenses can't include limitations on use, so we do not call ourselves open source.

I don't think it's strange at all. These licenses obviously have rhetoric reminiscent of FOSS licenses. These companies just don't want to call their technology proprietary.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#58

Post by bsnnkv »

poly2it wrote: post #55
bsnnkv wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but shouldn't dilute the FOSS label This is such a strange thing to post in response to a link which states: > Although n8n's source code is available under the Sustainable Use License, according to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), open source licenses can't include limitations on use, so we do not call ourselves open source.

I don't think it's strange at all. These licenses obviously have rhetoric reminiscent of FOSS licenses. These companies just don't want to call their technology proprietary.

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

Re: N8n raises $180M

#60

Post by cube2222 »

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…

Wow, thanks a lot for this extensive response, appreciate it a lot!
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