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N8n raises $180M

blog.n8n.io

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Re: N8n raises $180M

#71

Post by detaro »

primitivesuave wrote: post #70
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…

N8n is extremely popular among CS educators. I imagine at least a few thousand of those stars are from students who learned to code with n8n.

interesting! In what kind of contexts/classes is it used?

Re: N8n raises $180M

#72

Post by k__ »

viraptor wrote: post #20

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

A few days ago I looked into n8n and saw that people are switching to node-red.

Are these projects comparable?

Re: N8n raises $180M

#73

Post by sixtyj »

greenavocado wrote: post #64
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.

Sir, this is a VC forum for people that are trying to make money

And I thought that we do everything for prestige /s

Re: N8n raises $180M

#74

Post by jauntywundrkind »

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…

> 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-commercial or personal use.

It's not open source if you can't use it professionally or sell work derived from it [ed: comments have correctly called out that this is not the deal, thank you]. There's no chance this license or anything like it is ever going to be an OSI approved open source license. https://opensource.org/licenses

Re: N8n raises $180M

#75

Post by tomwhipple »

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…

As a software engineer I find it cumbersome and frustrating to use. When something doesn't work it can be difficult to see the true cause of the error. That said, those who are slightly less technical like analysts or PMs are able to put together reasonable POC solutions relatively quickly. (Though it remains to be seen how well this holds up when those POCs become business critical)

Further nitpick: Their Python implementation is based on WSAM so libraries that require C compilation won't work.

However if this funding let's them integrate a Claude-Code like tool, they'll have an amazing product.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#76

Post by jauntywundrkind »

dahart wrote: post #62
viraptor wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what open source means. Open source licences are well defined and listed here https://opensource.org/licenses With extra restrictions, n8n is at most "source available".

Open source does mean source available to many people, especially the non-programmer lay-public, no matter how much OSI and people who adopt OSI’s definition dislike it, c.f. the dictionary https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source (And BTW I like OSI’s definition!) Instead of claiming the words “open source” always mean OSI’s definition, it’d be better to clarify up front that you’re talking about OSI’s…

Source available but you can't use it professionally or commercially doesn't feel open source at all to me, and I disapprove of trying to weasel word around that.

Rather than clarify confusion & raise a real and important distinction, this post carries water for obfuscation and confusion: if people aren't clear the answer isn't to loosen the definition, it's to make the distinction clearer.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#77

Post by SafeDusk »

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…

Building close to this space[0] too but starting with low code instead of no code. Still wondering in node-based GUI is the way to go, another alternative is something like Lovable where it is entirely chat based.

[0]: https://github.com/aperoc/toolkami

Re: N8n raises $180M

#78

Post by cmsj »

bsnnkv wrote: post #58
poly2it wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Surely the goal is to ensure that there is no erosion of FOSS as a concept?

The existence and growth of FOSS is something that has happened as a result of considerable advocacy, and while its broad success has become somewhat self-sustaining, there will never not be the risk of a slide into more single-corporation-friendly "source available" realms.

It's not a bad thing to push for "source available" to be considered as not going far enough, and to not let it supplant FOSS through purely pragmatic concerns.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#79

Post by inhumantsar »

PyWoody wrote: post #68
an0malous wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I had gone into medicine like my parents wanted

I think about going to law school more with every passing day.

Just imagine all the vibe coded nonsense your clients would bring to the table. Billable hours sure, but still.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#80

Post by cmsj »

dahart wrote: post #62
viraptor wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what open source means. Open source licences are well defined and listed here https://opensource.org/licenses With extra restrictions, n8n is at most "source available".

Open source does mean source available to many people, especially the non-programmer lay-public, no matter how much OSI and people who adopt OSI’s definition dislike it, c.f. the dictionary https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/open-source (And BTW I like OSI’s definition!) Instead of claiming the words “open source” always mean OSI’s definition, it’d be better to clarify up front that you’re talking about OSI’s…

I would argue completely the opposite, and that we actually have a very clear set of descriptors available to us, each of which is a subset of the following ones:

* Free Software - meets FSF's four freedoms

* Open Source - meets OSI's definition

* Source Available - you can read the source code

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