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Ghostty is now non-profit

mitchellh.com

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Re: Ghostty is now non-profit

#61

Post by miclill »

simonw wrote: post #52
purpleidea wrote: post #37

This is great work and good news, however if you want to guarantee a long-term public benefit, use copyleft without a CLA! A more well-funded company can fork this and make the new work proprietary, meaning you did all that initial development work for them for free. Apple and Microsoft are the two most likely parties to do so here. This isn't a theoretical risk.

Using a copyleft license can add friction that reduces the amount of value your software can create in the world. I'd honestly rather Apple and Microsoft ripped off my work if it meant that my work provided more utility to a larger number of people.

I recently heard the argument that the license-friction of copyleft sometimes is actually a good thing. Think linux kernel that arguably is more successful than all the BSDs combined (citation needed)...

Re: Ghostty is now non-profit

#62

Post by veverkap »

mindcrash wrote: post #36
bos wrote: post #3

Really nice to see a solidly valuable project develop a sustainable foundation instead of turning into yet another VC-backed devtools startup that will inevitably die in a few years.

Rather thank IBM for paying Mitchell an outrageous amount of money for Hashicorp, so he can devote all of his time on awesome projects like Ghostty without ever thinking about sustainable income ever again. So thanks, IBM! <3

While you're not wrong, I think this undersells a little how much Mitchell has given of his time to OSS. Yes, he's fortunate that he doesn't have to worry about money, but even when he did, he still contributed openly and freely.

That's part of what drew lots of us to HashiCorp in the first place - giving back.

Re: Ghostty is now non-profit

#63

Post by simonw »

miclill wrote: post #61
simonw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a copyleft license can add friction that reduces the amount of value your software can create in the world. I'd honestly rather Apple and Microsoft ripped off my work if it meant that my work provided more utility to a larger number of people.

I recently heard the argument that the license-friction of copyleft sometimes is actually a good thing. Think linux kernel that arguably is more successful than all the BSDs combined (citation needed)...

I'd be really interested in hearing more about that argument.

I can take a guess with respect to Linux: that's the kind of software where forcing companies to submit code back to it is enormously beneficial due to the need for an operating system to have drivers for vast ranges of different hardware.

Re: Ghostty is now non-profit

#65

Post by abnercoimbre »

mellowyeller wrote: post #48
torben-friis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This community sounds amazing, is there anything similar for adults rather than teens? The “understanding through building” mentality is something I never got to experience as a group, the obvious answer is open source and the like but I wonder if there’s something more learning oriented.

Seconding this. I pivoted to tech in my early 30s and feel I've missed out on a lot of community building opportunities.

Self-plug: consider Handmade Cities. We have a simple meetups [0] page if you decide you appreciate our ethos. Hopefully we have an active meetup location near you?

In any case, good luck on finding the right community!

[0] https://handmadecities.com/meetups

Re: Ghostty is now non-profit

#66

Post by xrd »

I'm really excited about Ghostty (and Zig mostly because of my exposure via ghostty). Until ghostty I hadn't really considered that a terminal would be a catalyst for innovation and even startups. But, libghostty is REALLY fascinating. And, all the good AI coding tools, IMHO, operate inside a terminal, and my head is spinning with ideas about hammering on the container for these new CLIs.

(UWash CompSci strikes again, not that I'm biased)

Re: Ghostty is now non-profit

#67

Post by dulvui »

simonw wrote: post #52
purpleidea wrote: post #37

This is great work and good news, however if you want to guarantee a long-term public benefit, use copyleft without a CLA! A more well-funded company can fork this and make the new work proprietary, meaning you did all that initial development work for them for free. Apple and Microsoft are the two most likely parties to do so here. This isn't a theoretical risk.

Using a copyleft license can add friction that reduces the amount of value your software can create in the world. I'd honestly rather Apple and Microsoft ripped off my work if it meant that my work provided more utility to a larger number of people.

On the other hand having a copyleft license without CLA makes rug pulls nearly impossible (once there are multiple contributors and copyright holders). But you are right, from a (commercial) value perspective, permissive wins.

Re: Ghostty is now non-profit

#68

Post by simonw »

Inspired by this I just posted a resonably niche feature request to the Ghostty discussion forum (copy and paste to support text/rtf)... and found out within half an hour that the equivalent of what I was asking for was already available on their main branch: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/9798

Re: Ghostty is now non-profit

#69

Post by arjie »

Mitchell Hashimoto is a real programmer in the old vein. It's lovely to see him succeed. Ghostty is fantastic to use.

There was a devtools blackhole era once where if you got in that business you were just giving things away and never got to reap the rewards. Then there was this era of founders who figured out how to make it sticky and capture value in a Pareto-optimal way.

Love to see it.

Re: Ghostty is now non-profit

#70

Post by knowknow »

miclill wrote: post #61
simonw wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a copyleft license can add friction that reduces the amount of value your software can create in the world. I'd honestly rather Apple and Microsoft ripped off my work if it meant that my work provided more utility to a larger number of people.

I recently heard the argument that the license-friction of copyleft sometimes is actually a good thing. Think linux kernel that arguably is more successful than all the BSDs combined (citation needed)...

Keep in mind that Linux doesn’t use the GPL3 and stuck with the GPL2 since the maintainers and Linus Torvalds thought that it was overly restrictive [1]. So at some point the license friction becomes too large to be practical for organizations to use or contribute to.

[1] https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU

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