Zulip 12.0 Released
blog.zulip.comWe tried Mattermost, Discourse and countless other, none were close in simplicity and features of Zulip. It's one of the best, underrated projects for that suits smaller teams.
There’s a thoughtful discussion in there about how AI has impacted the project. Not quite complementary but hopeful.
I like Zulip a lot, though its interface is a bit inscrutable.
I tried to use Zulip as _the_ interface for my personal AI assistant because its topic based memory model fits nicely for a personal assistant. But, the iOS app was barely useful to use daily. It lacked even basic features like the ability to create a topic/channel. I could not believe it would be the case and to my surprise, it was.. I have moved on to choose Rocket.chat for my needs. Choosing to implement E2E notifications over basic functions of a mobile app reinforces my decision to move away.
Sorry for the tone. It was a rant not to sound like an unthankful freeloader, but highlight the outsider perspective. The project can prioritize what they want of course.
> It lacked even basic features like the ability to create a topic/channel.
Pretty sure you can define a new topic from all clients.
On mobile you currently need to use the web interface to create a channel.
I don't know why using an agent would need multiple channels - but sounds like one solution would be have the agent create channels via the API?
Fwiw docs on channel creation being limited on mobile:
https://zulip.com/help/create-channels#how-to-create-a-chann...
Docs on topics creation being supported on mobile:
https://zulip.com/help/introduction-to-topics#how-to-start-a...
With what Google is doing with Android sideloading, I'm not sure Google is a good partner for open source projects. As it says in the blog post, Zulip has a nice history with Google Summer of Code, but it might be good to let this be the last year. Zulip currently supports sideloading. https://zulip.com/apps/android https://github.com/zulip/zulip-flutter#get-the-app That could get awkward later on. Though I guess if Zulip wants to remain in the Google Play Store, interaction with Google is unavoidable.
We can and should advocate for preserving sideloading.
But boycotting a wonderful public-benefit program that Google has funded for 20 years over this sort of product policy issue seems crazy to me. Sure, GSoC does improve Google's brand.
But Google Summer of Code is one of the most effective charitable programs I've seen from any large corporation. And I think it's very telling that nobody else does anything like it.
Google is is the only company on the planet that cared about supporting the open-source community enough to invest, fund, and administer a program like this that has _no_ direct benefit to the company. (Many corporate grants/sponsorships to OSS projects are in exchange for something tangible).
The scale of GSoC is enormous, and the program has been very meaningful. A huge portion of our contributor community and about half the Kandra Labs team are people who I originally met via GSoC.
Congrats on the release, and love the write up!
I’m increasingly thankful Zulip exists as an open source alternative to other collaborative platforms. In the age of agents, it feels like a huge advantage that folks can take a robust platform as a base and customize it to their needs (and hopefully contribute back)!
Also, thanks for sharing about your experiences with agent-based contributions, both internally and externally. Super fascinating.
Be well!
Big fan of Zulip. We've self-hosted it at my company for 6 years without a single failure or issue.
maybe actual e2e messaging some year.. issue thread for that is weird, not because it's not a priority, but because of the consistently bad security logic stated as to why it's not on any roadmap