Gitter, the open source chat and networking platform, has been sold to secure chat application company Element which will continue to support and invest in the service and the user communities going forward.
As many of you are aware, GitLab has been focused this year on driving efficiency with a goal of extending our depth in our core product categories. That focus led us to look for a buyer for Gitter that could increase investment required to serve developers. With Element’s acquisition of Gitter, GitLab has more bandwidth to devote to our core business and Gitter will continue to have opportunities to thrive.
“A great project chat is an essential element of most open source projects and Gitter is the leading open source solution,” says Sid Sijbrandij, CEO, GitLab. “Under GitLab, Gitter’s community has grown to 1.7M users who have also contributed to improving the product for everyone. We are happy that Gitter will now have a fantastic home with Element. They have the momentum to quickly build on the success of Gitter to expand its footprint within the developer community and act as a driver for the rest of its business and the Matrix ecosystem. It’s a great home for Gitter.”
Element is the company behind Matrix, the open network for secure and decentralized communication with more than 20 million users.
“It’s a privilege to have Gitter join Element,” says Matthew Hodgson, CEO and CTO at Element. “Gitter is the only chat platform focusing exclusively on developers, and we cannot wait to extend its reach to the entirety of the open Matrix network - confirming Matrix as an ideal home for open collaboration between software developers.”
Founded in 2014, Gitter has operated as a standalone product, independent of GitLab, since 2017. Gitter is unique in its developer focus – the tagline is “Where developers come to talk.” Used by large communities including Node, TypeScript, Angular and Scala, Gitter’s service is free, open source and has no commercial edition. A complete, indexed message history and robust integration API makes Gitter a perfect platform for managing communities around open-source projects. Gitter is available on the web with clients available for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android.
Going forward
Element plans to build out native Matrix connectivity, replacing the matrix-appservice-gitter bridge running since 2016. Over time, Gitter will effectively become a Matrix client.
Get more details on this transition on the Changelog podcast.
Matrix has a detailed Gitter transition plan and welcomes feedback on the process.
