8 ms·

We've been using Zulip internally for a couple of years now. We've used IRC and Jabber, looked at Slack and Hipchat and Skype and Lync, and somehow keep coming

by kevinr 11y ago

We've been using Zulip internally for a couple of years now. We've used IRC and Jabber, looked at Slack and Hipchat and Skype and Lync, and somehow keep coming back to Zulip. It lets us have real, ongoing, and substantive conversations, with a large number of participants, without being overwhelmed. I sometimes feel like Twitter is actually a better comparison for Zulip than Slack---in Zulip like on Twitter, it's easy to watch and participate in multiple conversations at the same time. Zulip's threading model exists somewhere between Slack's rigid "rooms" model and Twitter's everything-is-public model, so it's much lighter-weight to participate in multiple places at once than on Slack but it's also easier than on Twitter to have the right conversation with the right people without bothering others with something irrelevant to them. And Zulip's threading model makes it much easier to have multiple conversations within the same space without stepping on each others' toes or getting distracted. Our remote folks rely on it particularly heavily. When Zulip got acquired it was our remote employees and their managers who were showing up outside my cube with pitchforks when I breathed a word of turning it off. It gives folks in other offices or working from home a watercooler and a way to virtually tap a group of coworkers lightly on the shoulder when they need help. Basically we can't live without it, so I'm super-excited to see it finally open sourced. Thanks for making it happen. :-)

sytse 11y ago
So Zulip was acquired in March 2014 http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/17/dropbox-acquires-zulip-a-stealthy-workplace-chat-solution-still-in-private-beta/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/17/dropbox-acquires-zulip-a-st... You mention considering to turn it off. Is open sourcing it a way to keep the project going? Any idea how many people at Dropbox will be tasked with maintaining it?
- tabbott 11y ago
  Just to clarify, most users of Zulip were using the central cloud service (zulip.com). Kevin's experience is from one of the Zulip customers who had "Zulip Enterprise" (aka a Zulip server in their own data center -- which is also the basis of the "self-hosted production server" installation process you see now is based on). So "turning it off" in this case refers to their discussions about their internal deployment, not the Zulip cloud service (which is still running for existing Zulip users today). I think my blog post covers pretty well why we open sourced Zulip: https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2015/09/open-sourcing-zulip-a-dropbox-hack-week-project/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2015/09/open-sourcing-zulip-a....
  - sytse 11y ago
    Thanks! If I read https://www.recurse.com/blog/90-zulip-supporting-oss-at-the-recurse-center https://www.recurse.com/blog/90-zulip-supporting-oss-at-the-... correctly Dropbox has helped to open source it but will not dedicate engineers to it. In that case it is interesting that you'll have to sign a Dropbox CLA to contribute https://github.com/zulip/zulip#contributing-to-zulip https://github.com/zulip/zulip#contributing-to-zulip. But even with that, the code is under Apache 2, it is great that Dropbox took the time to properly document everything and open source it. At GitLab we now bundle Mattermost and we're working with Rocket.chat to bundle that. I wonder what the demand for Zulip is, it looks really full featured.
    - chetanahuja 11y ago
      Sytse, we use gitlab enterprise edition at packetzoom (Our VP eng is a major gitlab contributor). We'd love nothing more than have a proper chat system with good native clients. Slack has excellent UX and mostly decent native clients but the pricing and/or holding our chat logs hostage has always bugged me. Please consider integrating zulip. Though even without gitlab integration, we'll still try it out anyway.
      - iyn 11y ago
        I'd also like to see integration between Zupip and GitLab.
        tabbott 11y ago
        https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/33 https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/33
      - sytse 11y ago
        Thanks for using and contributing to GitLab! Although Zulip is far ahead of other open source solutions we are leaning towards Rocket Chat. Javascript and Meteor are the most popular language and framework so it would be easier to contribute. It is not who is ahead now but about speed of development. Zulip is very heavy, they recommend 4GB for a production installation. This is due to the 15 workers that are not multi-threaded (GitLab has multi-threaded background workers). We're proud that people can run GitLab on a Raspberry Pi 2. Forcing people installing the whole GitLab suite (GitLab itself and chat) to have a 8GB server is not acceptable. We're still hoping for multi-threaded unicorn foreground processes in GitLab so we can run it on 512MB. By the way, Rocket Chat has 'native' clients on Android and IOS, although I think they use webview inside them.
hobarrera 11y ago
There's something that quite surprised me: being a software company: how is it that you've never gotten around to a Linux client? Do most of you use the web-version, or is dropbox mostly windows-centric (sorry, I'm quite ignorant about dropbox team's culture. :D )
- sgk284 11y ago
  Most tech companies (doubly so in the Bay Area) develop on Macs and deploy (servers) on Linux. There'd be little pressure to develop a Linux client since most devs are spending their day on a Mac.
  - evook 11y ago
    That's probably not true[0]. In my experience you would often endure belittling or sheep calls, even bullying, if you walk into the office with a MacBook or an Iphone. We've customers where it's not even allowed to store corporate secrets on non-linux os. But that are highly professional financial or insurance dev corporations. [0] http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
    - michaelmior 11y ago
      I'm confused about what the linked dataset is supposed to show as it doesn't seem related. In any case, I've certainly noticed ancedotally that MacBook usage is quite high.
  - CydeWeys 11y ago
    Everyone at my work (a big company) has Linux desktops. Granted we wouldn't use Zulip, or anything else hosted externally for that matter, but this does create a large demand for other types of software running on a Linux desktop from us, e.g. IDEs.
    - plonh 11y ago
      Google Drive doesn't even work on Linux. Linux Desktop will never be more than a VM host or Web Browser host.
new299 11y ago
I'm sure it's a great communications tool, however since Rice joined Dropbox's board (http://www.drop-dropbox.com/ http://www.drop-dropbox.com/) I'd have severe concerns using anything released by Dropbox. Even if it's open source. And while I apologize for a tangential comment, people should be aware of the politics promoted by their software vendors. Hopefully if it's a truly valuable tool it will be forked and audited.
- dave_sullivan 11y ago
  I agree in principal that the politics behind a business matter. But why focus on Dropbox? Rice teaches at Stanford too, why not boycott Stanford and anything coming out of it?
  - CydeWeys 11y ago
    There's a big difference in scope and impact between merely teaching somewhere and being on the Board of Directors and running it. It's not equivalent.
    - andreyf 11y ago
      She was Provost there from '93 to '99, which is a little more than teaching [1]. I think that while her willingness to go with the Bush administration's extremist positions (on torture and surveillance, especially) are a dark mark on her career, Dropbox is worth dropping for wholly different reasons (e.g. technical incompetence [2]) than who is on their board. 1. "As the chief academic and chief budgetary officer of the University, the Provost is responsible for administering the academic program, including both instruction and research, and for the coordination of the administrative and support functions of the University with its academic purposes." (https://provost.stanford.edu/ https://provost.stanford.edu/) 2. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Dropbox-Accidentally-Turned-Off-Passwords-on-File-Storage-Service-655206 http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Dropbox-Accidentally-Turne...
      - CydeWeys 11y ago

by kevinr 11y ago

sytse 11y ago

So Zulip was acquired in March 2014 http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/17/dropbox-acquires-zulip-a-stealthy-workplace-chat-solution-still-in-private-beta/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/17/dropbox-acquires-zulip-a-st... You mention considering to turn it off. Is open sourcing it a way to keep the project going? Any idea how many people at Dropbox will be tasked with maintaining it?

tabbott 11y ago
Just to clarify, most users of Zulip were using the central cloud service (zulip.com). Kevin's experience is from one of the Zulip customers who had "Zulip Enterprise" (aka a Zulip server in their own data center -- which is also the basis of the "self-hosted production server" installation process you see now is based on). So "turning it off" in this case refers to their discussions about their internal deployment, not the Zulip cloud service (which is still running for existing Zulip users today). I think my blog post covers pretty well why we open sourced Zulip: https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2015/09/open-sourcing-zulip-a-dropbox-hack-week-project/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2015/09/open-sourcing-zulip-a....
- sytse 11y ago
  Thanks! If I read https://www.recurse.com/blog/90-zulip-supporting-oss-at-the-recurse-center https://www.recurse.com/blog/90-zulip-supporting-oss-at-the-... correctly Dropbox has helped to open source it but will not dedicate engineers to it. In that case it is interesting that you'll have to sign a Dropbox CLA to contribute https://github.com/zulip/zulip#contributing-to-zulip https://github.com/zulip/zulip#contributing-to-zulip. But even with that, the code is under Apache 2, it is great that Dropbox took the time to properly document everything and open source it. At GitLab we now bundle Mattermost and we're working with Rocket.chat to bundle that. I wonder what the demand for Zulip is, it looks really full featured.
  - chetanahuja 11y ago
    Sytse, we use gitlab enterprise edition at packetzoom (Our VP eng is a major gitlab contributor). We'd love nothing more than have a proper chat system with good native clients. Slack has excellent UX and mostly decent native clients but the pricing and/or holding our chat logs hostage has always bugged me. Please consider integrating zulip. Though even without gitlab integration, we'll still try it out anyway.
    - iyn 11y ago
      I'd also like to see integration between Zupip and GitLab.
      - tabbott 11y ago
        https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/33 https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues/33
    - sytse 11y ago
      Thanks for using and contributing to GitLab! Although Zulip is far ahead of other open source solutions we are leaning towards Rocket Chat. Javascript and Meteor are the most popular language and framework so it would be easier to contribute. It is not who is ahead now but about speed of development. Zulip is very heavy, they recommend 4GB for a production installation. This is due to the 15 workers that are not multi-threaded (GitLab has multi-threaded background workers). We're proud that people can run GitLab on a Raspberry Pi 2. Forcing people installing the whole GitLab suite (GitLab itself and chat) to have a 8GB server is not acceptable. We're still hoping for multi-threaded unicorn foreground processes in GitLab so we can run it on 512MB. By the way, Rocket Chat has 'native' clients on Android and IOS, although I think they use webview inside them.

hobarrera 11y ago

There's something that quite surprised me: being a software company: how is it that you've never gotten around to a Linux client? Do most of you use the web-version, or is dropbox mostly windows-centric (sorry, I'm quite ignorant about dropbox team's culture. :D )

sgk284 11y ago
Most tech companies (doubly so in the Bay Area) develop on Macs and deploy (servers) on Linux. There'd be little pressure to develop a Linux client since most devs are spending their day on a Mac.
- evook 11y ago
  That's probably not true[0]. In my experience you would often endure belittling or sheep calls, even bullying, if you walk into the office with a MacBook or an Iphone. We've customers where it's not even allowed to store corporate secrets on non-linux os. But that are highly professional financial or insurance dev corporations. [0] http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
  - michaelmior 11y ago
    I'm confused about what the linked dataset is supposed to show as it doesn't seem related. In any case, I've certainly noticed ancedotally that MacBook usage is quite high.
- CydeWeys 11y ago
  Everyone at my work (a big company) has Linux desktops. Granted we wouldn't use Zulip, or anything else hosted externally for that matter, but this does create a large demand for other types of software running on a Linux desktop from us, e.g. IDEs.
  - plonh 11y ago
    Google Drive doesn't even work on Linux. Linux Desktop will never be more than a VM host or Web Browser host.

new299 11y ago

I'm sure it's a great communications tool, however since Rice joined Dropbox's board (http://www.drop-dropbox.com/ http://www.drop-dropbox.com/) I'd have severe concerns using anything released by Dropbox. Even if it's open source. And while I apologize for a tangential comment, people should be aware of the politics promoted by their software vendors. Hopefully if it's a truly valuable tool it will be forked and audited.

dave_sullivan 11y ago
I agree in principal that the politics behind a business matter. But why focus on Dropbox? Rice teaches at Stanford too, why not boycott Stanford and anything coming out of it?
- CydeWeys 11y ago
  There's a big difference in scope and impact between merely teaching somewhere and being on the Board of Directors and running it. It's not equivalent.
  - andreyf 11y ago
    She was Provost there from '93 to '99, which is a little more than teaching [1]. I think that while her willingness to go with the Bush administration's extremist positions (on torture and surveillance, especially) are a dark mark on her career, Dropbox is worth dropping for wholly different reasons (e.g. technical incompetence [2]) than who is on their board. 1. "As the chief academic and chief budgetary officer of the University, the Provost is responsible for administering the academic program, including both instruction and research, and for the coordination of the administrative and support functions of the University with its academic purposes." (https://provost.stanford.edu/ https://provost.stanford.edu/) 2. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Dropbox-Accidentally-Turned-Off-Passwords-on-File-Storage-Service-655206 http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Dropbox-Accidentally-Turne...
    - CydeWeys 11y ago