If you’re looking for an Open Source alternative, give Windmill a try.
Windmill OTOH supports a bunch of programming languages for steps (Go, Rust, Python, TS, etc.) and seems to have a much more “code first” approach. Reusable blocks are more like code templates compared to n8n.
Hard to say which is better. I really like the ability in windmill to just write code for each step and it comes across more powerful, but it feels less polished and intuitive when compared to n8n.
I'm not ashamed to admit than n8n feels more polished. There are a few reasons:
- Our team was and is still much smaller. We were 5 for the first 2 years, we are now 10 (year 3), and are continuing to hire to follow our growth.
- They have been around for longer and mature for longer, more time to iterate. We have reached some level of maturity recently and are now spending more iterations on polishing rather than new features.
- Their surface area is smaller, windmill does A LOT and expose more for the better or worse.
n8n has done a lot of things really well and although we have a different audience, there is a lot to learn from what they did very well and we have the upmost respect for them. We have some overlap, but I think ultimately we strive in different kind of orgs and will cohabit rather than compete.
Are these two things being wrongly compared to each other when they're actually meant for different purposes? Or is Windmill indeed a good point of comparison?
I hadn't seen this term before but it looks interesting:
Also, they require a CLA with copyright assignment so they can reuse your contributions in nonfree software. It’s always shady when companies do this.
The open source parts of Windmill are partially Apache and partially AGPL; there are some of us who additionally regard the AGPL as nonfree (because it’s really a EULA).
They sell a version of the software, of course they'd have a CLA. It's not shady, it's a prerequisite to be able to sell - because even if you assume no contributor will decide to retract their contribution later on, many of your customers will ask for guarantees that you fully own, control and can sell the code you're selling them
If you believe in the ideology of software freedoms, you don’t release nonfree software. It’s open source cosplay.
Linux is GPL and that hasn’t stopped anyone from adopting it.
Or, you believe in open source software, want yours to be available, forkable and even why not get community contributions, but you also want a full time job that allows you to eat? How much of the world's software wouldn't exist if we gatekept open source to a volunteer effort only?
Linux and Python and Wordpress and Redis stand in stark contrast to your basic presumption here.
It’s not gatekeeping to say that if you care about software freedoms, you don’t promote or release nonfree software. It’s just logic.
The choice is not “release only free software xor be commercially successful”.
WordPress mostly make money hosting, and are indeed a good example. Redis somewhat, but it wasn't going that well, hence their recent license changes.
> The choice is not “release only free software xor be commercially successful”.
There are vanishingly few companies that manage to pull off a successful (profitable) business off open source software they're developing, and most of them predate the rise of the hyperscalers that can just sell everyone your open source as a service. Can you think of any others?
And whereas Windmill seems to be agpl + apache.
So that is what you are mentioning, right?