Zulip Server 1.6 released
blog.zulip.org
blog.zulip.org
Zulip is an amazing open source community to work with. The community puts in a lot of effort and thought to welcoming new contributors and keeping it easy, fun, and productive to contribute.
Chat with the devs at https://chat.zulip.org !
It's very well designed from the ground up and gets all the little details right (real name + mail address handling, not mangling pasted content, full text search, hell, they even ship with Nagios checks for their backend services...).
The threading model is second to none - once you've become used to it, using any room-based chat software feels cumbersome and "wrong".
The threading model is probably how all other chat apps should work, but I don't think that the ui/ux that actually exists in Zulip is good.
Also, there are giant buttons at the bottom of the screen to compose a new one.
Yes, you do need to learn a bit about how to use the tool, but that's true for any new tool.
I suspect that this is common with corporate tools and services since business priorities usually dictate that resources are focused on revenue generating systems / services. Comes with it's own risks...
FTR: will see if I have some cycles to contribute improved release process documentation in the coming months.
It's not slack--they don't host it for you.
I don't understand your second question.
however a cursory review of the codebase indicates that most of the services run as the zulip user and authentication uses certificates rather than passwords.
That would mean your concerns regarding /root would be solved automatically.