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PascalW

Nice work!

How does it compare to n8n? [0]

n8n is the closest OSS alternative to Zapier I've seen so far.

[0] https://n8n.io/

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I just tried titanoboa and it's not even close to Zapier. n8n comes pretty close and it's much more convenient to hack with nodejs.

n8n is pretty neat as a low-code or no-code tool and comes close to zapier in many cases.

As someone with zero Java experience, this tool seems like a very steep learning curve.

Zapier requires zero coding knowledge for most part and is a great no-code tool.

A bit similar, but on JVM. The main focus of Titanoboa is however as follows:

- make rapid prototyping of new steps possible during runtime, without any need to restart/redeploy

- focus on distributed processing, where in master-less Titanoboa cluster you can have pretty much any number of nodes

It's license (fair code) sucks.

That is a fair criticism, I am aware of the AGPL license shortcomings.

I just picked up the more restrictive license at the beginning - being a sole funder and not working on this full time etc. I simply did not want somebody (e.g. a big company with a big team) grabbing my code along the way and running away with it.

Since now Titanoboa got to the shape I envisioned it to be in I am starting to focus more on adoption, so yes I am definitely thinking about switching to less restrictive license since it will probably help.

Also at the beginning I was not aware how badly AGPL is perceived (I always thought if it was good for Mongo it could work for me, but I may have been wrong).

You misunderstood, it's not you who's being criticized.

n8n used to write "open source" on their webpage while publishing the product with a proprietary license. A lot of discussions ensued.

https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n/issues/40

Oh really? Wasn't aware of that. Thanks for the link!

>>I just picked up the more restrictive license at the beginning - being a sole funder and not working on this full time etc. I simply did not want somebody (e.g. a big company with a big team) grabbing my code along the way and running away with it.

Sounds like a great reason to use the AGPL! Can always switch the license for later releases as you gain traction.

Why exactly? I myself have been researching the options that exist to write open source software but at the same time prevent industrial leeches from benefiting from it (aka. avoiding Amazon playing an Elasticsearch move EDIT - or was it Mongo?).

So far I've stumbled upon using dual AGPL + commercial for those who don't like the copyleft; using something like Mongo's SSPL; MariaDB's BSL; and now, Commons Clause.

On the surface (I didn't yet study carefully the intricacies of all options) all these look to me as a great way to publish code and contribute to the whole of our common knowledge, while at the same time being able to maybe make a living from it, something for which it's important to prevent some bad actors from bundling it and profiting from it on your behalf. Otherwise that code wouldn't really exist at all to start with...

I might write an Ask HN becaude this topic is complex.

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