Alya Abbott

Great to be here. Yeah.

Great to be here. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Zilp has kind of an interesting history. So it was started back in 2012. So before things like Slack were out there. Yeah. That time it was not open source. It was just kind of your regular closed source startup out in Boston. And when it was still in private beta, the company was acquired at Dropbox.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Zilp has kind of an interesting history. So it was started back in 2012. So before things like Slack were out there. Yeah. That time it was not open source. It was just kind of your regular closed source startup out in Boston. And when it was still in private beta, the company was acquired at Dropbox.

At the time, Dropbox was exploring kind of different strategies with chat as kind of providing a suite of Office products alongside with the file storage. And then they went in a different direction and actually open sourced the entire Zulip code base along with the full history of the project.

At the time, Dropbox was exploring kind of different strategies with chat as kind of providing a suite of Office products alongside with the file storage. And then they went in a different direction and actually open sourced the entire Zulip code base along with the full history of the project.

So all that commit history, there was a hack week project to clean that up and make that something that can be publicly shared. And they very generously, I guess, once it was open sourced, Tim Abbott, who was one of the original co-founders and was working at Dropbox at the time, started running that open source project in his kind of nights and weekends in his spare time.

So all that commit history, there was a hack week project to clean that up and make that something that can be publicly shared. And they very generously, I guess, once it was open sourced, Tim Abbott, who was one of the original co-founders and was working at Dropbox at the time, started running that open source project in his kind of nights and weekends in his spare time.

And Dropbox also very generously gave that trademark for Zulop to Tim as well. So at this point, there's no relationship between Zulop and Dropbox.

And Dropbox also very generously gave that trademark for Zulop to Tim as well. So at this point, there's no relationship between Zulop and Dropbox.

Yeah, yeah. But we're definitely very grateful that they decided that they would be happy to open source it, given that they were not using it themselves.

Yeah, yeah. But we're definitely very grateful that they decided that they would be happy to open source it, given that they were not using it themselves.

I know Tim advocated for it, and that's really just they wanted to contribute to open source and just kind of a generous gesture for the community.

I know Tim advocated for it, and that's really just they wanted to contribute to open source and just kind of a generous gesture for the community.

Yeah, the product was called Zulip at the time.

Yeah, the product was called Zulip at the time.

Yeah, originally, I don't know the details of their strategy, but probably I think originally they had thought that they might build their own chat app. As you know, I know you maybe have heard of Dropbox Paper, Mailbox. They kind of were at the time acquiring startups in a bunch of the office tools, in the office tool space more generally. And then kind of company priorities shifted.

Yeah, originally, I don't know the details of their strategy, but probably I think originally they had thought that they might build their own chat app. As you know, I know you maybe have heard of Dropbox Paper, Mailbox. They kind of were at the time acquiring startups in a bunch of the office tools, in the office tool space more generally. And then kind of company priorities shifted.

The Zulu team ended up working on the core Dropbox product. And yeah, so they just kind of didn't end up going in that direction.

The Zulu team ended up working on the core Dropbox product. And yeah, so they just kind of didn't end up going in that direction.