
--
Zulip, open source Slack competitor, is relaunching after being aquired by Dropbox, Zulip 3.0. Current customers include hundreds of startups and large companies from Akamai Tech to Doctors on Demand and even Alcoholics Anonymous. It has the most active open source contributors in the space today compared to any competitor.
Zulip was sold to Dropbox while still in private beta and then Dropbox let Tim Abbot have it back after releasing it as an open source project.
Original startup's founders are Tim Abbott (Kandra Labs / Zulip founder), with Jeff Arnold, Jessica McKellar, and Waseem Daher were his cofounders. Today, they are the founders of Pilot (https://www.indexventures.com/perspectives/pilotcom-raises-40m-in-series-b-funding-and-launches-pilot-tax/).
Zulip's original 2012-2014 startup angel investors (2013) are Drew Houston (founder of Dropbox), Adam d'Angelo (Facebook's first CTO and now founder and CEO of Quora), Diane Greene (cofounder and CEO of VMWare, later CEO of Google Cloud), Paul English (founder of Kayak), Hans Robseron and Sanjit Biswas (cofounders of Meraki), Dharmesh Shah (cofounder of AngelList), Howard Lerman (founder and CEO of Yext), Enrique Salem (CEO of Symantec at the time), and SV Angel.
Zulip was then Acquired by Dropbox in 2014, while in private beta, then given back to founder. At that time Zulip became open source. Most Zulip beta customers tried switching to Slack, and then switched back to Zulip as they found it more productive (despite being a beta that was no longer developed). Dropbox decided not to pursue the team chat market, and Dropbox's legal/engineering leadership then decided to donate the software to the open source community. A dozen engineers flew to Dropbox HQ for a week to help with the engineering work of making it possible to open source Zulip. Dropbox generously donated the Zulip trademark and zulip.com/zulip.org domains.
While there are several open source projects in the team chat space, Zulip has by far more significant contributors than any of the others. Total contributors is a vanity metric; because fixing a typo via the GitHub website counts, it's inflated and doesn't give a useful picture of the breadth of a project's community. The right statistic is how many significant contributors there are - people with dozens or 100 commits ( commits are individual code contributions).
For comparison these are the other major open source team chat projects:
Mattermost: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-server/graphs/contributors shows 21 contributors with 100 contributions. This includes fulltime employees for their venture-funded company.
Rocket.Chat: https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/graphs/contributors shows 15 contributors with 100 contributions. This includes fulltime employees for their venture-funded company.
Matrix.org: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/graphs/contributors shows 13 contributors with 100 contributions. This includes fulltime employees for their venture-funded company.
###
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
09/10/2026
September 10 2026, 06:00 (PDT) Dolby Expands Dolby OptiView Platform with New Capabilities at IBC 2026
New Sports Intelligence helps providers better unders...
08/10/2026
Modern venues have come a long way since the tinny, echoing audio of the mid 20t...
08/10/2026
ESPN's first Super Bowl production will stream in English and Spanish on Disney+, while the ESPN App carries the full slate of game, ManningCast, studio, an...
08/10/2026
From high-school videoboards to War Eagle Productions, the Opelika native is learning how to lead shows and capture big moments
The future of live sports produ...
08/10/2026
The Television Academy and Prime Video have announced a six-year agreement making Prime Video the exclusive global home of the Emmy Awards beginning with the 20...
08/10/2026
Techex will exhibit at NAB Show New York 2026 (Booth 623, Javits Center, October...
08/10/2026
X Games has announced the appointment of Steve Rogers as Chief Operating Officer. Rogers previously served as COO of World Supercross and spent nearly a decade ...
08/10/2026
Fonn Group has appointed Trevor Spielmann as Sales Director for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Spielmann joins from EVS, where he held sales and business de...
08/10/2026
The flagship program will originate from major PG events with a four-camera production, live distribution across PGTV, social platforms
Perfect Game is bringin...
08/10/2026
Innovation rarely happens in a vacuum. More often, it happens at the point of collision: when worlds that have run on separate tracks begin to converge. That is...
08/10/2026
For decades, the production and broadcast services business has run on a familia...
08/10/2026
Uplynk, Zixi, BroadView Software, and Grass Valley have published The IP Converg...
08/10/2026
The NFL has announced the return of the Big Data Bowl, the league's analytics competition, now in its ninth year and again powered by AWS. Registration is o...
08/10/2026
Eutelsat has renewed its partnership with T l diffusion d'Alg rie (TDA), Algeria's national broadcasting network operator, for continued distribution of...
08/10/2026
Disney will livestream Super Bowl LXI on February 14, 2027, alongside the game's broadcast on ESPN and ABC. All Disney subscribers in the United States wi...
08/10/2026
RHStv and Red House Streaming have announced an expansion of their partnership w...
08/10/2026
Gray Media has announced a distribution agreement with TEGNA and DAZN to simulca...
08/10/2026
SVG readers can save 10% on registration and receive a complimentary Solutions H...
08/10/2026
PROTON Camera Innovations GmbH has been named a recipient of a 2026 Technology a...
08/10/2026
Industry leaders discuss real-world cloud workflows for live game production, pl...
08/10/2026
The next-gen audio technology joins Dolby Vision as part of Apple TV's immersive F1 experience...
08/10/2026
David France, Jesse Short Bull, Mato Wayuhi, N. Bird Runningwater, Jodi Archambau, Jhane Myers, Paul McGuire, Amber Morning Star Byars, Holly Macarro, Nick Tils...
08/10/2026
Dynamic panning plug-ins get an upgrade
Sound Particles have just announced major updates for two of their popular dynamic panning plug-ins. Energy Panner 2...
08/10/2026
New expandable instrument boasts full DMNO engine
UDO Audio have just announced the upcoming release of a new, expandable synth that packs the power of the ...
08/10/2026
Two new subwoofers added to monitoring line-up
ADAM Audio's monitoring range has just been expanded with two new DSP-equipped subwoofers, the Sub8 PRO a...
08/10/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
08/10/2026
Calrec gives broadcasters freedom of choice at NAB Show New York We're looking forward to meeting up with you all at NAB New York on 21st-22nd October.
Cal...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Globecast, a leading provider of broadcast, media and entertainment managed services, will showcase its next generation of media orchestration services at NAB S...
08/10/2026
Clear-Com played a critical role in the production communications infrastructure for Rock in Rio 2026, one of the world's largest and most recognized music...
08/10/2026
Sohonet Launches ClearView Rush: A Leap Forward in Studio Review, Built for Crea...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Ikegami announces a major expansion to its range of broadcast-quality live production cameras. Scheduled for introduction on Ikegami booth 708 at NAB New York, ...
08/10/2026
Calrec will be located at Booth 444.
Freedom to choose
The media landscape is evolving quickly, and the broadcasters best placed for what comes next will be...
08/10/2026
LiveU has announced that CRD Audiovisuel relied on LiveUs LU900Q intelligent production unit, with built-in native LiveU IQ (LIQ ) connectivity, to deliver live...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Marshall Electronics, a globally recognized provider of high-performance video solutions for broadcast, streaming, AV and professional production, will exhibit ...
08/10/2026
14-hour package also includes A Remarkable Place to Die season 2 as well as libr...