is this dead?

[BTruer]

it looks so.

[funkaoshi]

The project isn't being maintained by the original authors, but should still continue to run. You may need to upgrade node packages, I haven't tried running it locally in some time. Everything is open source, so you can also use it as a base to build upon. @hhaidar can confirm, but I believe there are lots of people still using it as a free alternative to Slack.