
N8n.io – Workflow automation alternative to Zapier - tablet
https://n8n.io/
======
janober
Thanks a lot for posting! Even though I had actually planned to post it later
myself ;-) Happy to see my project finally live on hacker news!

n8n is a free node-based "Open Source" (Apache 2.0 with Commons Clause)
Workflow Automation Tool. It can be self-hosted, easily extended, and so also
used with internal tools. Currently, there is no hosted version yet but you
can sign up on the website if you are interested to get informed once it is
ready.

I created it initially because I realized that every time I wrote a script to
automate a small task it took me a very long time. Depending on the task it
normally involved: reading documentation, writing code, committing to Github,
deploying on a server, error reporting, SSL, make sure it restarts on a crash,
and so on. So even very small tasks took at least half a day or day till
everything was up and running properly. Existing Open Source solutions were
not up to the task and also commercial ones like Zapier did not work for
various reasons. Some being that they do not work well with in-house tools or
complicated tasks and it gets expensive quite fast, ...

So hope n8n is as helpful for other people as it is for me. Also, all help
with further improving the project and create more integrations is very
welcome!

The project website with the nodes which exist and example workflows:

[https://n8n.io](https://n8n.io)

You can find the source code on Github:
[https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n](https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n)

The whole project is written in TypeScript and uses Vue for the frontend. So
it should be easily extendable for everybody with web development experience.

If you have any problems, questions or need an integration which does not
exist yet you can post it to the forum:
[http://community.n8n.io](http://community.n8n.io)

Documentation can be found here: [https://docs.n8n.io](https://docs.n8n.io)

Your feedback is highly appreciated!

Thanks a lot!!

UPDATE:

[Sorry are unable to answer any questions right now as it always displays me
that I am posting to fast. Will answer as soon as HN allows me!]

~~~
dragonwriter
> n8n is a free node-based "Open Source" (Apache 2.0 with Commons Clause)

Commons Clause is not Open Source. It is free-of-charge (for certain uses)
source-available proprietary software.

~~~
eastendguy
I understand that developers need to earn money for their work. => Another
license option to use is the the one of UI.Vision and others: Split the
product in an Open-Source core (e. g. GPL license) and a proprietary part for
the commercial "PRO" features of the product.

~~~
janober
Yes is an option but one I would hate to take. It would mean that I have to
artificially cripple the product for all users just to eventually earn money
from a few. That was the opposite of what I wanted. I wanted that everybody
can use it for free which gives the product the chance to get used by very
many people and so become amazing for all users over time. So ended up with
the Commons Clause as it aligned the most with my vision.

------
rrggrr
Zapier has about 1,000 integrations, more than any of their closest
competitors and at a price that is far less than others in their space. What
you've done here is great! The UX seems better than Zapier and the
extensibility & community approach terrific. The key, though, is going to be
adding integrations rapidly. I might also stress:

\- Bulk actions. \- Sync actions.

And support for other programming languages (eg. python)

Hope that helps.

~~~
anderspitman
If it's like most things in software (and life), there's probably a long tail
of niche/useless integrations in that list.

~~~
rrggrr
Not really. The integrations are node-up, meaning the SAAS creates its own
integration as value-add to its customers; and there's some user growth that
emerges from being in their catalog. But, you point is somewhat valid in that
many of the integrations tend to be shallow - so apart from a few key
functions it can be tough to use them for complex workflows.

------
rrggrr
Crowded space, but darn few (if any) shared source or community based
solutions. Here's a several examples from a market study I did in 2018:
Workato, Apiant, Inegromat, Snaplogic, CloudHQ, Boomi, Tibco, Jitterbit, AWS
Lambda, Mulesoft, Tray.io, ApacheNiFi, Stringify, Adeptia, Kotive, Cazoomi,
Scribesoft and several more.

I really think the community angle is unique.

~~~
tarsinge
Thank you for sharing this list.

It’s maybe a dumb question but even after looking in some of them I usually
fall back on a classic cron job + some Python scripts for automation for the
flexibility. What’s the biggest advantage of these services / solutions when
you already have some servers available?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Ability for a non-technical user to implement and manage the automation.

------
andrewflnr
I've seen enough of these supposedly non-programmer-friendly interfaces to
judge them all guilty until proven innocent (not that many, to be honest, but
I am scarred nonetheless). Looking at the video, it's not the worst I've seen.
But please, I beg you (the authors here or anyone building a similar product):

\- Provide first class debugging and dry-run support. Don't make people either
run in prod (as the demo video effectively does) or set up full testing
environments.

\- Strict, comprehensible scoping rules. Non-programmers will have more, not
less trouble with having named data propagated everywhere for reasons that
aren't visually clear. Global state is still bad.

\- Don't make users think about JSON.

\- Supply auto-layout. Don't force users to manually reposition things to get
a decent layout, and ideally don't let them. The demo video seems to show at
least the first half in place, so that's good.

\- Version control. Possibly via...

\- Ideally an isomorphically editable text representation. You can switch
between graphical and text representations and have changes propagate.

Maybe this project checks more of these boxes than I've seen so far. I'm
pathologically optimistic, so there's a good chance I'll work with this enough
to find out.

I don't really know why everyone wants to keep making these benighted flow-
chart UIs instead of using the relatively proven Scratch UI model.

~~~
npsomaratna
I'm curious - could you explain what you mean by the "Scratch UI"? I did some
searching on Google, but there appear to be several products which use this
term.

Is this what you meant?
[https://scratch.mit.edu/developers](https://scratch.mit.edu/developers)

~~~
vSanjo
I believe they are talking about that. I've seen that methodology of UI take
off lately, too.

------
anderspitman
HN usually finds a theme to complain about with any cool project. Looks like
this time they picked licensing. Just wanted to say thank you for making this
project. I think tech like Zapier/IFTTT are really cool, but I would never
trust a closed platform of this sort.

But something like n8n I would consider using, because you've provided an
escape hatch to lock-in by making the source available. I think it's totally
reasonable to prevent other companies from profiting from your work. I also
think it falls under the umbrella of "open source". If someone wants a truly
FLOSS version of this, they're welcome to make it themselves. But they won't,
they'll just complain and keep using n8n, because the licensing is good enough
for 99.9% of use cases.

EDIT: I just want to point out that there's been some discussion of licensing
here which I've personally found interesting and instructive. I've seen
several people suggest that there is a definition of the term "open source"
that is essentially universally agreed upon (that being the Open Source
Initiative definition [0]), and that that is the only valid definition. I've
worked in what I consider to be open source for many years, and wasn't aware
that such consensus had been reached. My personal views have not changed as of
yet, but my paradigm has definitely shifted. I intend to pay closer attention
to how others use this term, and carefully attempt to be clear about my usage
in the future. Having a single agree-upon definition of things is always
valuable, and if that's where we're at I'm all for it. I'm just not convinced
yet that it's actually 100% agreed upon.

That said, I think the author of n8n was pretty dang clear.

[0] [https://opensource.org/](https://opensource.org/)

~~~
wmsiler
There's a weird trend on HN. For proprietary products (e.g. slack) I rarely
see them getting criticized for having a proprietary license. If you are fully
open source, then of course they love you. But if you try to strike a
compromise and give away a lot while still keeping some licensing terms to let
you make money off your creation, then you'll be bombarded by complaints about
your licensing.

~~~
jchw
If Microsoft started calling Windows open source, I would be pretty peeved
too. The word open source here is used as a marketing term for a product that
isn't in spirit or reality. Yes, the source is available; that's nice, but
it's not the same.

~~~
smashthepants
Windows isn't free. Nor is the source available to be viewed, modified,
extended, learned from, etc. Also, you're comparing one of the biggest tech
companies in the world, to an individual who is trying to make a living. This
is an unfair characterization on every level.

~~~
jchw
>Windows isn't free. Nor is the source available to be viewed, modified,
extended, learned from, etc.

I mean, I'm just using a popular non-open source piece of software as an
example, you don't really have to read into it this much. Every comparison has
limits, this isn't any exception. You can substitute 'Windows' for 'Gitlab EE'
which is also proprietary software with available source code.

>Also, you're comparing one of the biggest tech companies in the world, to an
individual who is trying to make a living. This is an unfair characterization
on every level.

The depth of someone's pockets doesn't influence the definition of open
source, though. This is not a characterization at all, rather, I'm saying that
using the word open source to describe software that doesn't meet the criteria
is always going to upset people. There is a simple solution that costs no
money: removing the word open source. It is even recommended by the folks who
push common clause.[1]

I realize people are very passionate about this, but please try not to read
into what I'm saying too deeply.

(Also very notably: I have absolutely _NOTHING_ against proprietary or shared
source software, or developers making money; love Gitlab EE as an example.
Just please be honest.)

[1]: [https://commonsclause.com/](https://commonsclause.com/)

~~~
smashthepants
Well...characterizing the usage as a marketing term wouldn't be relevant if
the potential for making money weren't an issue here.

Even beyond that, on a human level, the attacks on an individual trying to
make a living seem unnecessarily harsh. My critique is mostly about the spirit
of the negative comments (not just yours, sorry), which all seem to assume
malice where there likely is none. I.e. several comments here and on the
github repo calling the developer a liar and coward, etc (again, not you, this
just happened to be the comment I replied to)

And I think this entire discussion proves that the definition of 'open source'
is not as cut and dry as some people would like. And because of that, saying
'just be honest' when someone uses one of the alternative definitions of the
term seems unfair.

I've always thought that the terms FOSS exists specifically to provide some
extra clarity in this regard...

And I don't know what you'd call this other than "open source" because I
haven't heard the term "source available" until today, and I would have had no
idea what it meant if that's what the developer had used....

~~~
jchw
>Well...characterizing the usage as a marketing term wouldn't be relevant if
the potential for making money weren't an issue here.

There is nothing wrong with marketing a project, be it open source,
proprietary, free, non-free, etc. I never suggested that. Just about
everything is 'marketed' in some sense.

>Even beyond that, on a human level, the attacks on an individual trying to
make a living seem unnecessarily harsh. My critique is mostly about the spirit
of the negative comments (not just yours, sorry), which all seem to assume
malice where there likely is none. I.e. several comments here and on the
github repo calling the developer a liar and coward, etc (again, not you, this
just happened to be the comment I replied to)

It's because there's a lot of passion involved. Even people who are pretty
great open source developers have acted in a way that is perhaps not so noble
if you read the flagged comments.

However, I don't think this is necessarily out of assumption of malice. The
problem is, it doesn't _matter_ if the author is malicious or not. The term
'open source' carries some connotations that many people have an intuitive
understanding of today. I firmly believe the very _reason_ a lot of big
projects choose open source is for the marketing benefit, and imo it is not
deserved if your project isn't really open source. This could seriously harm
the reputation of something that took decades to build, and if that seems
alarmist, well, I know I'm not alone in this sentiment.

>And I think this entire discussion proves that the definition of 'open
source' is not as cut and dry as some people would like. And because of that,
saying 'just be honest' when someone uses one of the alternative definitions
of the term seems unfair.

>I've always thought that the terms FOSS exists specifically to provide some
extra clarity in this regard...

> I don't know what you'd call this other than "open source" because I haven't
> heard the term "source available" until today, and I would have had no idea
> what it meant if that's what the developer had used....

The thing is, if I say something is 'open source,' you almost _certainly_ ,
today, will understand that to mean what it has meant for decades: the OSI
definition of open source, contrary to the wishes of some (including rms, for
example.) This is just the layperson's understanding. They may not have a deep
understanding of licenses or permissiveness, but it comes with a sense of what
a project has to offer. Being able to profit off of open source is something
that people inherently understand nowadays, and it took a long time for that
to happen.

The reason you wouldn't have understood another term is because there is not a
common understanding for 'source available' or 'commons clause.' This is
because it was not very popular in recent years, and remains relatively
unpopular. It is mostly pushed by companies that built amazing open source
projects and had trouble with creating a sustainable business around it.

And therein lies the contention.

\- Because of what Open Source implies, it gives projects a decent marketing
boost - including, of course, the common case where they are truly open
source. People rely on open source projects understanding the implications and
knowing roughly what they can do with it.

\- Commons clause doesn't imply the same things. But some companies are trying
to use the term 'open source' to describe them anyways. To me, this looks a
lot like trying to have cake and eat it too. It's not the same 'open source'
that people have slowly grown to understand.

Of course most people won't understand why this issue has much contention,
because this type of thing seems like a minor detail. In fact, many people,
including me, initially found it confusing that licenses like GPL allow you to
_profit_ off the work so as long as you follow the other clauses. It took me a
long time to understand that this is a very important part of what makes open
source special: the disconnect from the profit model. If you reconnect the
development and licensing to the profit model, in my mind this is losing a key
part of what makes open source so damn effective. Having many stakeholders
that all profit from a project can be incredible - the Linux kernel being one
such example.

People have to make money, though, and so going through the risky proposition
of making truly open source software and trying to build a business around it
is not always appealing. In my opinion, the obvious choice is to not make open
source software. So-called "commons clause" is one option. But again, I think
there is real danger in "open source" being conflated with things that nobody
understands it to be.

~~~
smashthepants
Fair points. And it gives me a little more context into the intensity of the
reactions. Thank you.

------
reilly3000
Cool project. One aspect of these integration systems is that the volume and
velocity of integration development is one of the main ways they show value.
Zapier claims 1500+ integrations, and they have many competitor with similar
counts of integrations. Somehow, they always seem to not have that thing I
need.

I wonder why, in this era of Swagger / OpenAPI / Postman Collections / API
Gateways ... why this is so difficult? I feel like there was a promise that
integration would become more magical at a rapid clip, but as it stands it
just seems like there are more options but no less headaches.

~~~
infectoid
Does Datafire meet some of your requirements?

[https://github.com/DataFire/DataFire](https://github.com/DataFire/DataFire)

I've used it before and it's not too bad.

~~~
reilly3000
Thanks for sharing, that is definitely compelling. I like that their
integrations cover lots of API methods, whereas a lot of simpler services only
cover a few.

------
orliesaurus
Look awesome, and although the license is definitely NOT open source (although
you DO say the parts that people care the most are best-effort open source to
the community), this has the potential to motivate other people to work on
similar projects or suggest improvements to yours.

However... The beauty of Zapier relies on its amount of pluggable blocks. I
don't think there's anyone in this market that has as many operations as
Zapier and using custom blocks you can do pretty much anything. Yes I am
totally a fan of Zapier as I have been using it for years! Zapier is like
LEGO, there are many clones of LEGO but only one true LEGO (ouch my feet hurt
just by thinking about it ;) ) I really hope you can get people to contribute
more and more integrations as that's what really matters at the end of the
day: The ability to use little or no-code to achieve automation between
various platforms!

~~~
zimmund
Zapier is propietary and prohibitively expensive. Yes, I like it -- but I'd
rather support small projects like this one, even if it requires a bit more of
time.

------
frb
We're using n8n in production for a month now and are pretty happy with it.

Easily extendable and new integrations can be built easily.

Also helps that the author works here and is generally a great guy ;-)

~~~
amandana
Same here. Nice work!

------
fenwick67
Nitpick but the commons clause license isn't really "open source" as much as
"source-available"

------
haywirez
Super happy to see this effort and eager to check the code out soon!

As someone who relies on a lot of Zapier-style API connections, I’d love to
hear more about how people approach it - how you go about managing env vars
(keys/token), abstracting similar service procedures (oauth, webhooks) and
generally monitoring 3rd party API endpoints for keeping the connections
healthy? Any advice from Zapier / IFTTT veterans?

Edit: the n8n docs seem good and also address most of my questions [1]

[1] [https://docs.n8n.io/#/nodes](https://docs.n8n.io/#/nodes)

~~~
janober
Yes, any advice would also be very appreciated from my side.

Great to hear that the docs are helpful! They were actually the main reason
why I did not launch on Product Hunt/Hackernews earlier. It was very important
for me to have something in place which is at least reasonable. Nothing more
annoying than bad docs. Anyway, still a lot on my list to add documentation
for. But it will get better, I promise!

------
cristyansv
question: if I have a project management software saas, and I want to
integrate n8n to make automations (for example: when a task is marked as
completed), is the license valid for this use?

~~~
cdolan
Also interested in this example and the answer.

------
cosmie
This is really neat! I'm generally prohibited from using stuff like Zapier at
work, since we handle a lot of client data and passing it through any third
party opens up a Pandora's Box of legal reviews. The self-hosted nature of
this would bypass a lot of that hassle.

Public Service Announcement for anyone at BigCorp: Microsoft has it's own tool
in this space called Microsoft Flow[1]. It's not as feature-filled as Zapier,
but it works in a pinch and you get access to it automatically as part of an
Office/Microsoft 365 license. So unless your corporate IT has gone to great
lengths to explicitly disable access to it, you can leverage it to make your
life at least a bit easier.

[1] [https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/](https://flow.microsoft.com/en-us/)

------
dgrabla
Leaving the UI aside, how is this different from Huginn? I have a few Huginn
agents running menial tasks, but I find time consuming to debug issues. Does
N8n have more connectors? What are the strengths compared with Huginn?

------
nubela
How are you funded? Because this honestly looks quite complete.

~~~
janoberhauser
I work two days a week for a startup to earn my living and the other time I
spend on other projects like n8n. That is why progress is not always as fast
as I hope it would be. That is why I also hope to make money with n8n as some
point to work full time and make real progress.

~~~
carltonbanks
Wow how do you do this? Can you divulge the specifics?

------
yboris
Sorry unsure, but perhaps this is similar?

[https://stdlib.com](https://stdlib.com)

> Standard Library: APIs as Building Blocks

------
royletron
Open source or not (I'm so confused) this works really well. Solid job.

~~~
basilgohar
From other comments in this thread, it's apparent this is "source-available"
but not "open source" in the sense of a free software [0] or OSI-compatible
[1] license.

But the usual benefits of free software, like what has been possible with the
Linux kernel, GNU software, and so much more, are not going to be possible to
the same degree with this software.

[0] [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-
sw.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html) [1]
[https://opensource.org/osd-annotated](https://opensource.org/osd-annotated)

------
underyx
Might end up difficult to talk about this project. I was pronouncing it
"Nathan" till I found the actual name in the docs.

~~~
JanKoenig
haha, same! I can see it eventually being renamed to Nathan

~~~
underyx
It would have to be Naaaaathan, then.

------
automatist
How is this different from node-red?

~~~
linuxdude314
Node-RED targets a different market than this product and Zapier.

Loosely speaking Node-RED has a superset of the functionality this project
has, sacrificing customization/generality for simplicity.

Zapier and n8n interface with the user via a catalog model.

Without needing to know what is going on behind the scenes or seeing any code,
a person can follow a recipe and bolt together (certain) APIs to achieve
business requirements.

The “certain” is an important to note because you will never achieve 100%
coverage for your “API glue” for a mid size to large organization “out of the
box” with any tool.

That being said, if using a tool like any of the above mentioned as a custom
workflow engine (knowing you will be writing software from the onset) or as
_a_ solution and not a limiting factor or “silver bullet”, they can be very
useful!

Other tools that can achieve similar results (using Directed Acyclic Graphs,
where the nodes represent the execution of your code for a desired pre-
programmed task) are Airflow, Flink, NiFi, Dagster, Dagobah, Celery, and many
more.

------
johnm
In terms of the licensing debate... Did you bother to actually read the Common
Clause FAQ? Here are the first 2 FAQ entries:

"What is Commons Clause? The Commons Clause is a license condition drafted by
Heather Meeker that applies a narrow, minimal-form commercial restriction on
top of an existing open source license to transition the project to a source-
availability licensing scheme. The combined text replaces the existing
license, allowing all permissions of the original license to remain except the
ability to "Sell" the software as defined in the text.

This Clause is not intended to replace licenses of existing open source
projects in general, but to be used by specific projects to satisfy urgent
business or legal requirements without resorting to fully "closing source".

Is this “Open Source”? No.

“Open source”, has a specific definition that was written years ago and is
stewarded by the Open Source Initiative, which approves Open Source licenses.
Applying the Commons Clause to an open source project will mean the source
code is available, and meets many of the elements of the Open Source
Definition, such as free access to source code, freedom to modify, and freedom
to re-distribute, but not all of them. So to avoid confusion, it is best not
to call Commons Clause software “open source.” "

------
phonon
Have you thought about teaming up with an ESB like
[https://zato.io/](https://zato.io/) ? Could really help both of you, I think.

------
CoreyKeller
Thanks for this! I was just yesterday looking for good workflow automation
tools, and was leaning towards Huginn, but I will definitely check this out.

~~~
janober
Great to hear! If you have any problems simply post them in the forum I try to
get back to you asap (sorry, will maybe be right ow longer than normal as I
have a lot to follow up right now).

------
tmikaeld
Do I understand this correctly?

\- I'm allowed to setup an instance and charge clients to use it.

\- I'm NOT allowed to host the instance for clients and charge for that
hosting.

------
lyr
How do you compare to StackStorm ? You mentioned other similar solutions as
less adequate, but I'm curious to get a quick comparison.

~~~
ivoecpereira
This would be a nice addition to the website, comparing the solution with each
of its competitors.

------
bytematic
I really don't like when people say they are the "x" of "x" or the alternative
to "x", doesn't that just drive people to look at "x". Sure it gets the idea
across but there are other words to do that. Otherwise, great looking product

~~~
zeroxfe
It's not always that cut and dry. If X is already well known, it actually has
the opposite effect -- it capitalizes off of X's brand and familiarity and
drives people to the new product. It's a common technique (that is frequently
misused) in marketing and advertising.

I don't know if X=Zapier here is that effective, but I recognized it right
away, and clicked the link to learn more.

------
realty_geek
Good god Jan, you are amazing! Liked what you did with "link fish" and "ninja
crib" but this takes things to a whole new level. I would love the chance to
learn from you!!! Congrats, I'm pretty sure this project will be a big success

~~~
janober
Thanks a lot! But probably not the right person to learn from. But that is one
of the great things about the internet that you can now really always learn
from the best people in their field thanks to Udemy & co.

------
dsalzman
This reminds me a lot of a visual code based data processing tool developed
out of the NSA. Apache NiFi. The difficulty with all these low/no code
environments is getting scale and maintaining enough widget blocks for it to
be productive quickly.

------
TipiKoivisto
This really looks like a great software and seems that the guy behind it knows
what his doing. Additionally being open and fair about the licence. I will try
it ASAP and wish the project gets BIG.

------
shortformblog
This looks interesting, though Zapier is a little more intuitive interface-
wise. Overall though, nice work!

------
chrisweekly
Looks awesome!! Bookmarked, planning to play w/ this. Kudos for launching
something useful. :)

------
benoror
What are your thoughts on StdLib.com?

------
certera
I love how you licensed it. I'm seeing a trend in how developers are being
thoughtful about the licensing and how it will help monetize their efforts
later. Excited to see how this goes.

~~~
privateSFacct
Likely badly - this doesn't meet the OSI open source defintion, and while
interesting, many developers are reluctant to contribute to various shared
source / source available proprietary core products.

~~~
janober
Which I think is quite interesting.

I can totally understand if a person says "I do not want to contribute code to
a project for free when somebody else can make money with it". But then they
can not contribute code to any OSI approved Open Source licensed project.
Because with that license everybody can make money with it. And very often is
that somebody the wrong one (like for example Amazon).

The only difference with the Commons Clause is that now still somebody can
make money. But that somebody is now the entity behind the project. And they
normally put that money right back into the project (by for example hiring
developers) and make so sure that it improves and stays around a long time. So
I personally would prefer to contribute code to a project which uses the
Commons Clause then one which does not.

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
>I can totally understand if a person says "I do not want to contribute code
to a project for free when somebody else can make money with it"

It's not so much that somebody can make money with it. It's that you, the
project maintainer, will be reaping all the monetary benefits for yourself.
With open source software theoretically anyone can benefit. If you don't like
what the maintainer is doing, you can fork it. In this case, though I believe
the commons clause does allow you to fork it, you would still be the one
reaping any monetary benefits from the fork.

In my opinion the biggest issue with the commons clause is it no longer makes
logical sense to fork the project. If the project dies because you couldn't
make any money off it, and you don't go back and relicense your work, the code
is practically dead as an 'open source' project. Well, that and that the
consulting clause seems to be just sitting there waiting for a major court
case to decide what it truly means (even the lawyer who led drafting the
clause admitted as such [1]).

[1] [https://github.com/fossas/commons-
clause/issues/4#issuecomme...](https://github.com/fossas/commons-
clause/issues/4#issuecomment-415653257)

~~~
certera
If it dies, there can be a point where the maintainer can re-license under
more open terms, no? Until that point, the work and contributions are ensured
to help sustain the creator.

I'm planning on releasing my project under similar terms. I'm not particularly
interested in community contributions, but rather for there to be trust in
ensuring privacy and security. Sometimes, there isn't a one-size-fits-all with
the available OSI licenses and I appreciate what op has done to do his best to
find what works well for him and the community.

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
It's less a community in that case than potential customers. Your creating a
product, which is fine, but words like 'open source' and 'community' are quite
misleading.

~~~
smashthepants
The words 'community' and 'customers' are not mutually exclusive and using the
word community to refer to your customers is not misleading in the
slightest...

------
mthoms
Can someone possibly summarize why this doesn't fit the strict definition of
open source? What important rights are missing?

~~~
EvanAnderson
I'm one of the people who subscribes to the Open Source Initiative's
definition[1] of the term "Open Source". On that basis, the "Commons Clause"
applied to the license of this software discriminates against fields of
endeavor. This makes it a "source available" license to me, and not an "Open
Source" license.

[1] [https://opensource.org/osd](https://opensource.org/osd)

------
masukomi
> I hereby grant anybody the right to do consulting/support without prior
> permission as long as it is less than 30.000 USD per year.

technical note: USD uses commas to denote thousands. So, in USD 30.000 == $30
which isn't worth the time spent to do the research to pick up the first phone
call.

Social note: in many US cities $30k isn't enough to survive. In the US it's
certainly not enough to live _well_. So, you're basically saying "Hey, I give
you permission to make an important contribution to the success and community
of this project as long as you're willing to take an absolutely CRAP salary
for it."

that's.... not really cool.

I don't think it should matter how much a support person can make supporting
your project. The only way a support person will be crazy successful
financially is if your tool is ALSO crazy successful. It's a mutually
beneficial situation. Don't limit them. Their success is your success.

~~~
janober
Sorry for the confusion. The 30k was just some random amount to make it easy
for most people. And did honestly not expect that a lot of people's income
would come to 100% from n8n. Thought it would be one of multiple things they
do and so 30k seemed like more than enough to cover the majority. Additionally
did I not mean that they can ever make more. I simply wrote that up to that
amount they do not even have to say anything. In the next sentence it
additionally says: "If you have bigger things planned simply write an email to
license@n8n.io."

~~~
gault8121
This is very reasonable, and great that you provided those clear guidelines!
Too bad the poster above didn't provide the full quote. Great project!

------
swsieber
Nit: This is not open source - it is source available.(THANK-YOU for being
upfront about the license though!)

Still, I might use this, and thanks for releasing

~~~
janober
Yes you are correct. Wrote an extra section about it here in the docs:
[https://docs.n8n.io/#/faq?id=license](https://docs.n8n.io/#/faq?id=license)

Great to hear!

~~~
EvanAnderson
I think it's disingenuous of you to call it "Open Source" and I think the
distinction matters to more people than you think it does.

~~~
zaat
> Conversely, Richard Stallman argues the obvious meaning of term "open
> source" is that the source code is public/accessible for inspection, without
> necessarily any other rights granted, although the proponents of the term
> say the conditions in the Open Source Definition must be fulfilled.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source#%22Open%22_versus_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source#%22Open%22_versus_%22free%22_versus_%22free_and_open%22)

~~~
EvanAnderson
I fall into the "...conditions in the Open Source Definition..." camp. I think
many "source available" projects ride on the coattails of the goodwill
associated with the term "Open Source".

~~~
zaat
You can fall to whatever side you wish, but calling someone disingenuous for
siding otherwise does not show much of, indeed, goodwill, nor is it just.

~~~
tssva
The capitalization of "Open Source" makes it a proper noun or adjective which
means it refers to a specific thing. This is why the Open Source Initiative
(OSI) always uses "Open Source". You know they are referring to open source as
defined by them. "open source" would be referring to the general concept which
depending on interpretation could include shared source.

In my view using the proper vs common version of "open source" places this
into a disingenuous attempt to be associated with open source as defined by
the OSI.

~~~
zaat
In my view responding immediately with clear clarification of the degree of
the code openness, right under the title of the website, places this into this
as something which isn't remotely disingenuous. In my view seeing this as
disingenuous is, quit frankly, odd.

It is also goes against the site comment's guideline (as well as general sane
rule) of: Assume good faith.

~~~
EvanAnderson
Here's a concrete example of the connotation in action: I wouldn't have
clicked thru to the comments or the project's site if the title of this
posting was "Source-Available Alternative for Zapier".

I saw "Open Source" and assumed, as I suspect many people did, that it was
talking about the Open Source Initiative definition of Open Source. Intended
or not, those two words carry a connotation for a lot of people. I'd rather
not see that connotation watered-down, either.

~~~
roblabla
Then only click on links that say "Free Software". OSI redefined "Open Source"
post-facto, and it has always been somewhat ambiguous. Free Software has
always been unambiguously "Free as in Freedom Software".

------
romanovcode
Wow, this is a lot of work. Thanks a lot for open-sourcing it!

~~~
bevax
Only, it is not open sourced: [https://docs.n8n.io/#/faq?id=is-n8n-really-
open-source](https://docs.n8n.io/#/faq?id=is-n8n-really-open-source)

Deceptive tactics.

------
fergie
At the risk of sounding flippant: the pipe operator.

