I've been a happy Zulip user (and realm admin) for 13 years: it's one of my favorite pieces of software, and I use it daily. My understanding is these changes will be very good for Zulip's long-term stability and success.
(I'm a volunteer member of the new foundation's advisory board.)
> Over the last few months, I’ve been reflecting deeply on the myriad ways in which AI is changing the world, and how it might change the world in the future. And I came to the conclusion that it’s vitally important that we navigate this strange adolescence of technology well, and that I should contribute to this cause more directly than I ever could as the CEO of Kandra Labs.
The compensation for a senior developer at Anthropic is also certainly much better than a FOSS nonprofit - I'm sure that had nothing to do with his reasoning.
Sad to see yet another longtime open source developer begin working for AI companies that disregard free software licenses for their training and enable the deluge of low quality AI pull requests that waste maintainers' time.
> I’m stepping back from full-time Zulip leadership to join Anthropic, alongside three senior team members, and we’re donating the company to a newly created, independent, nonprofit Zulip Foundation
Not trying to be cynical … but announcing on a Friday afternoon is typically the operating mode for when you need to announce something that you do not want to get noticed.
I can only speculate this weeks Bun/Rust news might have played into how this Zulip news is being handled.
I've only used Zulip when checking out the Lean Zulip a few years ago, and I thought it was an infinitely better interface than Discord for serious discussion, and also much easier for lurkers to find information. I wish more projects adopted it.
Thanks for your work on Zulip and for everything you did to increase its availability to the masses. Your work was important. Congratulations on your new position at Anthropic. I wish you well in this new chapter of your life.
> I’m stepping back from Zulip to join Anthropic because of its remarkable commitment to the responsible development of AI for the long-term benefit of humanity.
I cannot quite agree to this. But nonetheless I wish good luck to the Zulip project.
This article would have been fine and a good send-off if the maintainers just said they were moving on to greener pastures. The discussion of the Anthropic job offer and the cult-like praise of them seems out of place, especially the unnecessary defensiveness in the tone.
It’s okay to make money and change up your career! But this communication is bizarre.
I've long thought that we need a name for what Zulip is other than "team chat." IMO it's different qualitatively than slack/mattermost/discord/teams &c.
bro just say: "Anthropic is going to pay me a beefy salary and it's exciting!" what's this salad come on: "I’m stepping back from Zulip to join Anthropic because of its remarkable commitment to the responsible development of AI for the long-term benefit of humanity."
Long-time Zulip advocate; I've (successfully) pushed for it at two organisations, so genuinely, thanks for building something worth that effort.
One thing I'd like to understand better: how does the Foundation intend to keep its mandate narrow? The Mozilla comparison in the post is one I find cuts both ways... technically excellent product, foundation that drifted considerably from "make the browser good."
The advisory board has some names I associate with community governance work beyond the purely technical. That's not necessarily a problem, but I'd love to hear how the Foundation thinks about scope creep, and whether there's anything structural that keeps the focus on shipping great software.
Wait, don't they know that the best way for your newly corporate orphaned quasi-source project to flourish is to donate it to the Apache Software Foundation?
> It’s hard these days to feel confident that a company whose product you love won’t yield to commercial pressure and start selling your data, putting in ads, or otherwise violating your trust. It’s been a challenge to convincingly make the case that this won’t happen to Zulip, especially to folks who might not have time to investigate deeply. The Zulip Foundation, which has the goal of serving the public good, makes this so much easier to communicate clearly.
As a huge fan of Zulip the app and the team behind it, I have intensely mixed feelings about the AI-ness of it all. But this does seem to be the most responsible way forward.
Zulip needed to be able to outlast its founders to be a truly sustainable project. The way they've focused on building up their contribution pipeline, the effort they spend on mentoring new developers, it has all built towards that being possible.
It seems like just yesterday that the core team started experimenting with using Claude to work on Zulip, which maybe adds to the surprise of this announcement. But I don't begrudge those individuals their choices. Ten+ years is a long time to work on any project.
Reads like Anthropic has recognized that in order to better get into enterprise it needs to be better than Slack - meet users where they are most of the time. Having someone experienced with a good reputation and a say on how to steer a product sounds quite beneficial.
Zulip means a lot to me, as it has been my introduction to open source through Google Summer of Code, and my first time actually working on a real codebase of a project that so many people love.
I'm excited about the Zulip Foundation as a new start; at the same time, I'm also a bit sad about the departure of the core team members. While I'm obviously biased, I can totally see the optics for people coming from Bun's acquisition—this is not that. Knowing Tim for 5 years, I'm confident that an incredible amount of thought has been put into this, and that this is in Zulip's best interest for its sustainability and integrity. I hope Zulip and team all the best for the next 10 years and more to come.
Concretely, how are you going to manage PR reviews? Even with today’s staff they are very slow (weeks for a round of NITS at a time), so with more developers leaving they’re going to explode and further discourage external contributors.
We used zulip at work 7 years until I had to leave when the startup had to cut down development. We didn't pay a cent (which is not good for the project...) It was truly enjoyable software. Nowadays I am forced to use Microsoft Teams, which is largely non-functional bullshit. We pay real money to the disgusting company.
Is the content visible to search engines yet? That was the deal-breaker when I looked into it for handling an open source community. No discoverability
22 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 50.9 ms ] threadI've been a happy Zulip user (and realm admin) for 13 years: it's one of my favorite pieces of software, and I use it daily. My understanding is these changes will be very good for Zulip's long-term stability and success.
(I'm a volunteer member of the new foundation's advisory board.)
The compensation for a senior developer at Anthropic is also certainly much better than a FOSS nonprofit - I'm sure that had nothing to do with his reasoning.
Sad to see yet another longtime open source developer begin working for AI companies that disregard free software licenses for their training and enable the deluge of low quality AI pull requests that waste maintainers' time.
Not trying to be cynical … but announcing on a Friday afternoon is typically the operating mode for when you need to announce something that you do not want to get noticed.
I can only speculate this weeks Bun/Rust news might have played into how this Zulip news is being handled.
To be clear, excited for Tim & team.
I cannot quite agree to this. But nonetheless I wish good luck to the Zulip project.
It’s okay to make money and change up your career! But this communication is bizarre.
it's pretty funny
One thing I'd like to understand better: how does the Foundation intend to keep its mandate narrow? The Mozilla comparison in the post is one I find cuts both ways... technically excellent product, foundation that drifted considerably from "make the browser good."
The advisory board has some names I associate with community governance work beyond the purely technical. That's not necessarily a problem, but I'd love to hear how the Foundation thinks about scope creep, and whether there's anything structural that keeps the focus on shipping great software.
As a huge fan of Zulip the app and the team behind it, I have intensely mixed feelings about the AI-ness of it all. But this does seem to be the most responsible way forward.
Zulip needed to be able to outlast its founders to be a truly sustainable project. The way they've focused on building up their contribution pipeline, the effort they spend on mentoring new developers, it has all built towards that being possible.
https://blog.zulip.com/2021/12/17/why-zulip-will-stand-the-t...
It seems like just yesterday that the core team started experimenting with using Claude to work on Zulip, which maybe adds to the surprise of this announcement. But I don't begrudge those individuals their choices. Ten+ years is a long time to work on any project.
https://blog.zulip.com/2025/11/24/zulip-ten-years/
Here's to the Zulip project continuing to maintain its engineering excellence and its community principles for the next ten years.
When politics gets involved, you loose all the talents ;)
They don't mind, they have their LLM code monkeys to handle rewrites automagically
After all, what's a society, if not just a bunch of soulless servants
Where do I find a list of employers using zulip?