Correction: Zulip is not centralized [LWN.net]

Correction: Zulip is not centralized

Posted Feb 22, 2026 18:10 UTC (Sun) by josh (subscriber, #17465)
In reply to: Correction: Zulip is not centralized by iabervon
Parent article: Open-source Discord alternatives

I think "decentralized but not federated" captures that nicely.

I'd say that's probably the biggest difference people would end up dealing with, if they switch from Discord to Zulip: you have one account per server, and DMs are per-server.

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Correction: Zulip is not centralized

Posted Feb 23, 2026 2:04 UTC (Mon) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

I think of "decentralized but not federated" as like classic IRC, where there were multiple disconnected networks (so, not federated), but each network also had no single server necessary for having a conversation on that network (users would pick somewhat randomly between servers that weren't too far from them).

None of these options are going to be centralized in the sense of having only one instance, since anyone can get the server software to run their own instance.