Creative Commons is making an important change: we are transitioning our community chat from Slack to Zulip. After considering three platforms—Matrix, Discourse, and Zulip—and gathering input from the community, Zulip came out as the clear favorite.

Why Zulip?

Aligned values: The Zulip project values resonate with Creative Commons’ commitments to openness, transparency, and community-driven spaces.
Better features for collaboration: Zulip offers a broad set of tools that make it easier to coordinate across time zones and languages. Its powerful threading system is especially suited to global, distributed communities.
Stronger permissions: Zulip provides more flexible roles and permissions, which will allow for better community moderation. 

What This Means for You

Moving to Zulip is not just a platform change—we are also taking this opportunity to strengthen our outreach and engagement process. We’d like to warmly invite everyone who sees themselves as part of the CC global community to join us on Zulip. This is the first step in fostering broader community collaboration within all of CC’s community spaces. 

Join now! To join CC on Zulip , please complete the Creative Commons Community Intake Form. This form will help us ensure a safe, transparent, and welcoming environment.

How the Process Works

Step 1 – Request
When you fill out the Creative Commons Community Intake Form, you’ll be asked to:

Verify you’re a real human
Confirm your interest/engagement in the open movement
Agree to CC’s Code of Conduct
You may also choose to opt in to our community mailing list.

Step 2 – Review

Applications will be reviewed by the CC team to ensure they meet the above criteria.
Approved applicants will be added to our community list, Zulip (if requested), and the mailing lists (if requested).
Applications that don’t meet the criteria will not be approved.

Transitioning from Slack to Zulip

As we transition away from Slack, we hope that any active Slack users will join us in moving over to Zulip, and we can engage new audiences on this platform. 

Timeline

Week of Sept 15: Announce migration to Zulip

people are able to join Zulip
Slack signup closed and redirected to Zulip signup

Weeks of Sept 22 – Oct 6: Weekly reminders
Oct 17: Slack is shutdown

What’s Next

As we’ve been discussing on the blog,  the current Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) membership process has been dormant for a number of years. We want to ensure that our community spaces are welcoming to everyone who sees themselves as part of the CC global community, regardless of existing CCGN membership. This is the first step of many!

We’re excited to take this step together. Zulip will give us a sustainable, values-aligned space to connect, collaborate, and grow as a community. If you are new to Zulip, you can get started with this helpful beginners guide. 

Join Zulip now and share what you’ve been working on in the open movement! 

Posted 18 September 2025

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