> 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.
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.
PS. With the sincerity out of the way - can't wait for the upcoming Rust rewrite!