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 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.
> 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.
Historically, Zulip blog posts have actually gotten more engagement when they landed on the Hacker News homepage during off-peak times for regular news (After business hours and weekends) than when we've published them on weekdays mornings.
Fun fact: The original blog post announcing the Zulip Open Source project (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10279961) was published on a Friday and I think got more attention because of that choice of date than it would have otherwise.
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.)
> 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.
> 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 worked in the FOSS space for roughly half a decade. Comments like this are easy to make and also add absolutely no value whatsoever. If you actually feel strongly about it, do the work yourself, no one is stopping you.
If you see complaining on forums and maintaining software as contributing the same kind of value, then oh boy do I have an enterprise-grade comment thread to sell you.
It's easy to advocate for what you believe in by posting comments on HN. It's harder to advocate for what you believe in by taking a low-paying job in a FOSS company, which they presumably didn't do.
> I'm certain that he's not doing this because he wants more money.
There are many reasons to change job. The pay is always one of them (if you don't work for money, it's not called a job, is it?).
> join Anthropic because of its remarkable commitment to the responsible development of AI for the long-term benefit of humanity.
Obviously, it's better to believe that what Anthropic is doing is good for humanity when you decide to go working for them. But it is at the very least debatable.
Yeah why else would a person choose to join an AI company right before an IPO worth trillions, almost guaranteeing any employer there to capture a massive multi-generational wealth defining bag, what €ould ₿¢ th¢ ₹ea$on I wonder?
If he thinks working for Anthropic is a good "cause" to devote his time to then that is also very disappointing. That would make him either very delusional as to the effects of Anthropic's work or naive in what he can achieve as their employee.
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 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.
For those looking for more context on Zulip, we did a major release a couple weeks ago: https://blog.zulip.com/2026/04/27/zulip-12-0-released/.
> 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.
To be clear, excited for Tim & team.
Historically, Zulip blog posts have actually gotten more engagement when they landed on the Hacker News homepage during off-peak times for regular news (After business hours and weekends) than when we've published them on weekdays mornings.
Fun fact: The original blog post announcing the Zulip Open Source project (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10279961) was published on a Friday and I think got more attention because of that choice of date than it would have otherwise.
Speaking as someone on the new board of directors: the intention here was more like "Friday is when we'll have the paperwork done", nothing more. ;)
Congrats to Tim and the rest of the team!
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.)
Not sure what to term this as it's an acqui-hire without the acquire, but why did Anthropic want to poach most of Zulip/Kandra's team?
Gotta love the frontier labs annihilating open source projects left and right either by acquiring them directly or stealing the teams.
How dare OSS devs get paid.
> 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.
> 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 worked in the FOSS space for roughly half a decade. Comments like this are easy to make and also add absolutely no value whatsoever. If you actually feel strongly about it, do the work yourself, no one is stopping you.
They are doing work, they're advocating for what they believe in. Consumers of FOSS deserve to have a voice too.
If you see complaining on forums and maintaining software as contributing the same kind of value, then oh boy do I have an enterprise-grade comment thread to sell you.
I think the op was suggesting the contribute to FOSS rather than shaming people who have contributed greatly for not contributing more.
It's easy to advocate for what you believe in by posting comments on HN. It's harder to advocate for what you believe in by taking a low-paying job in a FOSS company, which they presumably didn't do.
If you're going to blame the consumer, might as well blame the person that chose to easily be exploited too.
I've known Tim personally for over a decade. I'm certain that he's not doing this because he wants more money.
> I'm certain that he's not doing this because he wants more money.
There are many reasons to change job. The pay is always one of them (if you don't work for money, it's not called a job, is it?).
> join Anthropic because of its remarkable commitment to the responsible development of AI for the long-term benefit of humanity.
Obviously, it's better to believe that what Anthropic is doing is good for humanity when you decide to go working for them. But it is at the very least debatable.
Yeah why else would a person choose to join an AI company right before an IPO worth trillions, almost guaranteeing any employer there to capture a massive multi-generational wealth defining bag, what €ould ₿¢ th¢ ₹ea$on I wonder?
If he thinks working for Anthropic is a good "cause" to devote his time to then that is also very disappointing. That would make him either very delusional as to the effects of Anthropic's work or naive in what he can achieve as their employee.