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## Building software that will always be there for our users
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When choosing software that will be core to how one’s organization operates,
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such as a team chat platform, there is an important question: “Will this product
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still exist and be responsibly maintained in a few years?”
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We have designed our company, community, and technology with the explicit goal
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of Zulip being actively developed for many years to come.
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This theme cuts across many of the decisions described below. It is also
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reflected in our [history](/history/): Zulip's [earliest
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customers](/case-studies/recurse-center/) have enjoyed uninterrupted service
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since 2013.
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## Keeping Zulip 100% open source
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Many modern “open-source” companies use an intentionally crippled “open-source”
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version as a demo for their non-open-source paid product. In contrast, we are
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committed to keeping Zulip [100% open
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source](https://github.com/zulip/zulip#readme).
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2022-11-15 19:45:32 +01:00
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When you [self-host Zulip](/self-hosting/), you get all the
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[features](/features/) of our cloud offering. We work hard to [make it
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easy](https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/install.html) to set up
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and run a self-hosted Zulip installation without paying us a dime, which is why
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thousands of organizations do so.
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## Investing in community and mentorship
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Zulip is developed by a [vibrant open-source community](/team/), and we are
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fully committed to helping bring up the next generation of open-source
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contributors from a wide range of backgrounds.
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We have invested into making Zulip’s code uniquely readable, well tested, and
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easy to modify. Beyond that, we have written an extraordinary 150K words of
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documentation on [how to contribute to
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Zulip](https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/overview/contributing.html), with
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topics ranging from [practical Git
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tips](https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/git/index.html) to [essays on
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important architectural
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decisions](https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/subsystems/events-system.html).
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We also welcome and support contributors via [formal internship
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programs](https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/outreach/overview.html), with
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over 100 participants since 2016. Because of the thousands of hours our more
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senior contributors (including alumni of these programs!) have dedicated to
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mentorship, many of these participants have told us that they learned more
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contributing to Zulip than in their 4-year formal computer science education.
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## Building a sustainable business aligned with our values
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Guiding the Zulip community in developing a world-class team chat product with
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apps for every major desktop and mobile platform requires leadership from a
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talented, dedicated team. We believe that the only sustainable model is for our
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core team to be compensated fairly for their time. We have thus **founded a
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company (Kandra Labs) to steward and financially support Zulip’s development**.
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We are **growing our business sustainably**, without venture capital funding.
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VCs are incentivized to push companies to gamble for explosive growth. Often,
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the result is that a company with a useful product burns rapidly through its
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resources and goes out of business. We have built Zulip as a sustainable
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business (also supported by [SBIR grants](https://seedfund.nsf.gov/) from the US
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National Science Foundation), and are being thoughtful about our pace of
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spending.
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Funding our company without venture capital also allows us to **live by our
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values**, without investor pressure to compromise them when doing so might be
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“good business” or “what everyone does”.
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Finally, **we’re building software that is easy to maintain,** so it does
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not require a large team to keep the lights on. We have consistently emphasized
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high standards for codebase readability, code review, commit discipline,
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debuggability, automated testing, tooling, documentation, and all the other
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subtle details that together determine whether software is easy to understand,
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operate, and modify.
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## Supporting other worthy organizations
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An important part of Zulip’s mission is ensuring that worthy organizations, from
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[programming-language developers](/case-studies/rust/) to [research
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communities](/case-studies/lean/), are able to use Zulip whether or not they
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have funding.
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We sponsor [Zulip Cloud Standard](/plans) hosting for [open-source
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projects](/for/open-source/), [research groups](/for/research/),
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[education](/for/education/), [non-profits](/for/communities/) and other
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[communities](/for/communities/). This program has grown exponentially since its
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inception; today we are proud to fully sponsor Zulip hosting for hundreds of
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organizations.
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