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Ghostty is leaving GitHub

mitchellh.com

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Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#511

Post by skydhash »

estimator7292 wrote: post #78
atonse wrote: post #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 ex…

I'm still holding out hope for distributed and federated git forges. The only compelling reason for everyone to centralize on GitHub is collaboration on issues/PRs without everyone allowing signups on their self-hosted forges. That could be achieved without hosting every line of code everyone's ever written in the same crumbling infrastructure. It'll probably never happen. But it'd be really nice if it did.

> I'm still holding out hope for distributed and federated git forges.

Do you know that you can just send a patch via email (assuming you're not using the gmail web client)? You can even save the diff on some hosting website and send the link via any text medium.

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#513

Post by komali2 »

idan wrote: post #415
margalabargala wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "GitHub only gets better if people who give a shit stick around to make it better" This is true but misleading. Unfortunately. It is a true statement for developers working in GitHub at Microsoft. It's not a true statement for users. There is no avenue by which you make GitHub better by continuing to use it as it has been.

I do work at GitHub. I shared the above as a nuanced "yes and" to the pain that Mitchell is feeling. In the same way that Mastodon didn't replace Twitter even when Twitter went to shit, I don't believe in the various GitHub alternatives becoming a broadly-used thing. Maybe we'll end up with more GitHub-alikes like Codeberg, mabye we'll end up with some communities adopting novel forges like Tangled and Forgejo. But i…

> But it beggars belief that most of the millions of GitHub's users would switch to something so much more complicated. Has the same energy as "20XX is finally the year of linux on the desktop".

This is funny, because 2025-on seems to be starting some couple years of Linux on the desktop/laptop. Valve introduced millions of people to gaming on Linux, bazzite is exploding in popularity, and that popularity is pouring into other projects like Omarchy, Mint, Ubuntu.

GitHub maybe will end up like Twitter - where the people who are there are there because they have to be, while the people actually enjoying their time online are on different platforms.

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#514

Post by Rapzid »

nimbius wrote: post #163

>It’s not a fun place for me to be anymore. I want to be there but it doesn't want me to be there. I want to get work done and it doesn't want me to get work done. I want to ship software and it doesn't want me to ship software. Has anyone else shared this sentiment? If so Redmond needs to lean in hard. this is an absolute killing blow for Microsoft if it gains real traction. You made developers your cornerstone eigh…

Nope. I think all this is mostly virtue signaling and a bit of "GitHub derangement syndrome" in the water.

People are ANGRY about the AI boom impact right now and "microslop" is trending harder than "M$" back in the day.

MH had a weird ass set of Tweets a month or so ago talking about GitHub needing disruption and how the UI was bad. Now it's "Not fun anymore".

I guess you die a hero or live long enough to be irrelevant and shouting at clouds like Stallman.

Work at a company on GH Enterprise. Outside those recent major incidents and a few spots here and there we haven't even noticed issues. It NEVER comes up on engineering or leadership meetings as an issue or risk. Not a single time has GitHubs issues come up as an agenda item. Yeah, YMMV but still...

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#515

Post by pushcx »

idan wrote: post #96
mitchellh wrote: post #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…

Hi there! Longtime fan and hubber here. It's okay to have emotions. I have similar emotions. I'm GitHub User 22723 which is effectively the same as you (considering there's ~180m GH accounts nowadays) My version of your post reads differently: "GitHub only gets better if people who give a shit stick around to make it better" Walking away would be easy. I felt that way when I left Heroku ~six years ago. I left that jo…

> "GitHub only gets better if people who give a shit stick around to make it better"

What's the mechanism of action here? What changes if I stay? What changes if I give more or less of a shit? Is there javascript telemetry feeding my shit into a dashboard with a calibrated shitometer for executives to consult when they set quarterly objectives? My account is six weeks younger than mitchellh's and I've been watching GitHub fall apart for the last year, what will happen because I stick around to watch for another year? Besides that I will get covered in shit.

You're an employee. What changes if you stick around? Back in October 2025, the GitHub CTO Federov prioritized moving to Azure above feature work (https://thenewstack.io/github-will-prioritize-migrating-to-a...). Yesterday he recommitted to it (https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/an-update-on-...), writing "We started executing our plan to increase GitHub’s capacity by 10X in October 2025 with a goal of substantially improving reliability and failover." GitHub has had six bad months of increasing bugs and sharply decreased uptime, and the CTO just recommitted to staying the course. You've explicitly been directed to move to Azure, not to give a shit or to make things better.

So I'll defer to your direct expertise. From the outside, Heroku stalled and died because Salesforce prioritized everything else in its business above Heroku. Are GitHub's priorities so different? Does you giving a shit make Azure and Copilot the best top priorities for GitHub? Will Azure and Copilot be why I stop seeing SPA jank? Will Azure and Copilot be why I can see my list of open PRs? Will Azure and Copilot be why I see something more than the 500 unicorn? Will Azure and Copilot stop the spam PRs that want to undermine the quality of my code? Will Azure and Copilot lead to anything other than the same corporate dismissal and dysfunction that led to Heroku? Will you giving a shit matter?

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#516

Post by idebug »

mitchellh wrote: post #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…

I'm sure others have probably said this, but I'll say it anyways. Give Gitea a try. This is what I do. I self-host all my projects and mirror them to Github if they are public projects. And I have distributed Gitea runners across my various servers and they just work and my pipelines never fail me. I'd also highly recommend GitLab CE for similar reasons. But, if you really don't want to self-host, GitLab proper is also awesome and way better than GitHub IMO.

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#517

Post by kstrauser »

idan wrote: post #415
margalabargala wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "GitHub only gets better if people who give a shit stick around to make it better" This is true but misleading. Unfortunately. It is a true statement for developers working in GitHub at Microsoft. It's not a true statement for users. There is no avenue by which you make GitHub better by continuing to use it as it has been.

I do work at GitHub. I shared the above as a nuanced "yes and" to the pain that Mitchell is feeling. In the same way that Mastodon didn't replace Twitter even when Twitter went to shit, I don't believe in the various GitHub alternatives becoming a broadly-used thing. Maybe we'll end up with more GitHub-alikes like Codeberg, mabye we'll end up with some communities adopting novel forges like Tangled and Forgejo. But i…

> But it beggars belief that most of the millions of GitHub's users would switch to something so much more complicated.

I've moved my projects over to my own personal Forgejo (when I don't care about collaborating on them) and Codeberg (when I do). I find that ecosystem vastly simpler in the common ways that matter. For instance, viewing large diffs and syntax highlighted files is unbelievably faster, about as fast as GitHub's use to be before it was "improved".

For every way I use those forges as a solo or small-group contributor, the alternatives are as good as or better than GitHub today. Some product manager could become a company legend by figuring out how and why that is, then getting someone to do something about it.

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#518

Post by DANmode »

sergiotapia wrote: post #229
DANmode wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So not their problem.

Is their problem, but have some grace. You wouldn't be able to handle this insane growth either.

They’re being stuffed into Microsoft’s behemoth, and being taken off-mission by them.

People uploading more code doesn’t necessitate switching to Microsoft Azure backend, and doing other inane things that only benefit Microsoft.

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#519

Post by listless »

mitchellh wrote: post #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…

I felt pangs of emotion reading the post so it’s definitely not just you.

I think because GitHub has been such an important part of my life dating back to the very start of my career - just like you.

And it’s not just the technology, it’s the people. All the great projects there. The countless README’s I’ve dissected trying to setup something new. There’s people behind all of that and that always felt exceptionally meaningful to me.

It has been profoundly emotional to watch GitHub degrade over the past year. It’s almost like watching someone you love slip away. Which I have also done. It’s not the same, but there is something familiar in the pain.

Meanwhile streamers dunk on it in YouTube videos and on X and none of it is funny to me. It’s just tragic.

Now I’m choked up. Dammit all to hell.

Re: Ghostty is leaving GitHub

#520

Post by square_usual »

shimman wrote: post #301
hmokiguess wrote: post #284

> I know I work at GitHub so that might sound heretical, but I promise it’s not controversial for me to say it. Very few people internally believe that PRs and issues are ideal primitives for the future of engineering. And there are a lots of us inside the machine exploring what comes next. From GitHub's Staff Research Engineer https://maggieappleton.com/zero-alignment/

Honestly the arrogance of their workers are truly astounding. It also tracks that someone with little software experience would become GitHub's staff research engineer. Truly a massive signal that we can't let these companies lead the direction of tech in our country.

The state of HN truly has fallen if people are questioning Maggie Appleton's credentials. Besides, she's working on GitHub Next, not the core product. Sheesh.
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