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Comment by zimmund | Hacker News Reader

It looks like an interesting alternative to Zapier (or its open source counterpart n8n [1]).

As a potential user, before even trying the tool I'd like to know how are you planning to monetize it. Free sounds awesome, but you'll get to a point where it costs you actual money to keep all this working. I don't want to waste my time creating pipelines in a tool that won't exist in a year or two -or that will become paid and break my existing workflows (or make me expend money unexpectedly)-.

[1]: https://n8n.io/

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We believe anyone should be able to run simple, low-volume workflows at no cost, sharing their workflows with the public so everyone benefits from the work of others. We also want to foster a positive community where people feel good about sharing their work and where everyone can learn from one another.

In the future, we may offer features available on paid tiers which would be logical enterprise features such as single sign on (SSO), team collaboration and higher SLAs and throughput.

The constraints are listed in our docs - https://docs.pipedream.com/pricing/

Thanks for your reply! But it doesn't answer my question: I'm worried about how you will sustain your platform in the long run for all those free tier users.

Learning a new tool -even if it's friendly and has a community around it- takes time and effort. We want to know it will be there in the future. That's why I'm interested to know: how are you planning to keep Pipedream alive for, let's say, the next 5 years?

> or its open source counterpart n8n

Unfortunately, n8n is not[1] Open Source, despite claiming to be "Open Source and so free" on their website[2].

1: https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/blob/master/LICENSE.md

2: https://n8n.io/

That's a shame, seems like a great product...

What about the license makes this not open-source?

The “Commons Clause” License Condition they stuck on top of the Apache license: "Without limiting other conditions in the License, the grant of rights under the License will not include, and the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software."

https://commonsclause.com/

Q: Is this “Open Source”?

A: No.

> Without limiting other conditions in the License, the grant of rights under the License will not include, and the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software.

>For purposes of the foregoing, “Sell” means practicing any or all of the rights granted to you under the License to provide to third parties, for a fee or other consideration (including without limitation fees for hosting or consulting/ support services related to the Software), a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software.

IANAL but sounds like that means if you're building apps for people on the platform, consulting, using it for clients/freelancing, or a hosted platform built on the technology then you're not licensed to do that and will need to get approval.

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