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N8n raises $180M

blog.n8n.io

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Re: N8n raises $180M

#81

Post by havefunbesafe »

mnky9800n wrote: post #5
BoredPositron wrote: post #2

5000 n8n workflows that made me millions. 1 n8n workflow that made me 5k per hour... It's an okay product I appreciate that it's selfhosted with good documentation but they absolutely destroyed their brand with excessive affiliate marketing and now nothing of substance is left if you search for it anywhere.

When I think of n8n I think of the n8n subreddit of people posting about how their workflow is broken and they lost all their customers and don't know how to make it work and the obvious solution is that if they had written actual software with tests, fallbacks, etc. this wouldn't have happened.

That subreddit is the new r/dropshipping. I joined to see what fun tooling people were building, and I found it mostly populated with people attempting to setup a "business" with a single feature solution.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#82

Post by Lutger »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #74
hirako2000 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-commerci…

"Internal business purposes" can be professional right? Not saying its an open source license as defined by OSI, just that this license permits the most likely professional use (internal automation).

Re: N8n raises $180M

#83

Post by btown »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #74
hirako2000 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-commerci…

Source Available would be a better descriptor, and with its prevalence in game dev I’m surprised it’s not more commonly used in the broader tech community.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#84

Post by Lutger »

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

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.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#85

Post by bsnnkv »

cmsj wrote: post #78
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

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…

> there will never not be the risk of a slide into more single-corporation-friendly "source available" realms

There is something off about this to me in a world where FOSS exists in it's present form primarily to the outsized benefit of hyperscalers and entrenched incumbents

There was a post on another forum earlier this week on this same broad topic which resonated deeply with me, as someone (who like most of the US population) is a layoff and a medical emergency away from ruin:

> When I started getting interested in open source, I had problems like unreliable software, the inability to inspect or improve it, limited experience with collaborating. Open source solved those, but now my most pressing problem is that the excellent software I use is undermaintained and outright abandoned because the creators can't afford to keep donating time to it. Open source has been a process for solving problems, not the end goal. If it's not capable of solving problems, it's time for new approaches.[1]

[1]: https://lobste.rs/c/d4kmra

Re: N8n raises $180M

#86

Post by Lutger »

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…

Honestly, I never heard of people being confused about open source like this. Either you know about open source and then you know exactly what it means, or you know nothing about it at all. At least, that has been my experience. Open source, FOSS and source available are quite well defined and their definitions commonly known amongst anyone with even the slightest clue about software licenses.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#87

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: N8n raises $180M

#88

Post by philipwhiuk »

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/

"post-open source license"

That's a terrible reimagining, subtlying implying that open-source is old and past it.

It's a pre-open source license. They've not quite made the bar.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#89

Post by philipwhiuk »

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…

In my view this is little more than FUD.

Re: N8n raises $180M

#90

Post by nikanj »

kamranjon wrote: post #3

I’m just wondering if anyone that is closer to this space could shed some light on if this $2.5B valuation seems more or less accurate? I have played around with n8n - I just didn’t know if it was ubiquitous/profitable. $180m round seemed pretty huge but maybe it’s really a unicorn?

$180m seeds make sense if you remember to say AI lots. See Thinking Machines for example.
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