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Ghostty is leaving GitHub

mitchellh.com

21–30 of 1001 posts

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#22
During one of the x threads where Mitchell was (legitimately) complaining about Github, there were a couple replies suggesting that GitHub should hire him to be their CEO.

And I remember seeing that and thinking "huh... not at all a bad idea."

There is a specific kind of leader that can turn such ships around, and they are strong in their convictions, and aren't just "managers", but visionaries coupled with strong execution and power to attract talent.

I think a new GitHub will emerge and when it's just right, will grow like wildfire (like OpenClaw, or even GitHub itself did during the SVN and SourceForge era). And many are already trying to be that new GitHub.

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#23
post #3

What do we think is more to blame for GitHub's massive decrease in quality? I've heard the following theories: 1. Increasing amount of AI-generated code in their codebase, decreasing the quality of the service. 2. Bought by Microsoft, and their bad engineering culture has spread to GitHub. Perhaps it's a bit of both.

I'd add a third point: record service usage. https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/an-update-on-...

[deleted]

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#24
the issue is where to go?

codeberg, self-hosted forgejo, gitlab, still-beta sourcehut, tangled? github was “the git community” and now it’s fracturing—you need accounts everywhere, you can’t easily discover neat projects

i like tangled if only because it’s built on atproto which emphasizes ownership and transferability of identity: something that would make the move off github so much easier

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#25
I'm very interested in where ghostty ends up - I wonder if they'll follow Zig to Codeberg?

It does seem like it might, in general, be a very opportune time for GitLab (or another host) to publicly step up!

There seems to be a lot of chatter on X recently about wanting an entirely new GitHub usurper that doesn't look like GitHub at all, but in the short- to medium-term I expect this not to gain a huge amount of traction because of the sheer cultural embeddedness of git + GitHub in modern day software development.

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#26
I know this is ridiculously dramatic, but its the truth: I actually cried writing this blog post (tears hit my keyboard, I'm embarrassed to say).

Nobody should cry over a SaaS, of all things. But GitHub has meant so much more to me than that (all laid out in the post). I have an unhealthy relationship with it. Its given me so much and I'm so thankful for it. But, it's not what it used to be. I don't know.

We've been discussing it off and on for months, really started seriously discussing it a couple weeks ago, and made the final decision a few days ago. Putting metaphorical pen to paper and hitting "publish" makes it so very real.

I'm sure folks will make fun of me for this. It is a stupid thing. But I truly love GitHub, and I hope they find their way.

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#27
post #3

What do we think is more to blame for GitHub's massive decrease in quality? I've heard the following theories: 1. Increasing amount of AI-generated code in their codebase, decreasing the quality of the service. 2. Bought by Microsoft, and their bad engineering culture has spread to GitHub. Perhaps it's a bit of both.

It's been on a downward trend before agentic coding took over. I suspect it's a mix of Microsoft culture and Microsoft infrastructure. It's starting to feel about the same quality as other Microsoft services.

Short aside, I have to rehost dotnet CLI binaries because their hosting infrastructure is so unreliable that it was causing CI failures regularly.

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#28
Not surprised, I think I was subconsciously waiting for this as Mitchell has been very vocal about Github on X. They killed a lot of developer goodwill, and I feel this is just a start of the mass exodus.

Good luck to the team with migration! (And here's hoping it's ersc :))

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#29

I know this is ridiculously dramatic, but its the truth: I actually cried writing this blog post (tears hit my keyboard, I'm embarrassed to say). Nobody should cry over a SaaS, of all things. But GitHub has meant so much more to me than that (all laid out in the post). I have an unhealthy relationship with it. Its given me so much and I'm so thankful for it. But, it's not what it used to be. I don't know. We've been…

Anyone who makes fun of you for feeling things probably isn't anyone you want to listen to, anyway.

Thanks for being human and making ergonomic software for humans.

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