Ghostty, the fast, GPU-accelerated and open-source terminal from HashiCorp co-founder Mitchell Hashimoto, is now operating on a non-profit basis.
It’s not a nonprofit itself, but is ‘fiscally sponsored‘ by Hack Club, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit that uses its tax-exempt status to accept donations on Ghostty’s behalf and manages the compliance, accounting and financial governance required.
Overkill for what is ostensibly just another way to access the command line?
Not quite.
Hashimoto, writing on his blog, believes “…infrastructure of this kind should be stewarded by a mission-driven, non-commercial entity that prioritizes public benefit over private profit.”
“That structure increases trust, encourages adoption, and creates the conditions for Ghostty to grow into a widely used and impactful piece of open-source infrastructure.”
Hashimoto is the largest donor to the project (and says he intends to remain so), but the non-profit structure means the project can accept donations from others with oversight to ensure the funds are used on the project, not his lifestyle – not that he needs the cash…
Migrating to a public-first governance model might sound excessive for a terminal emulator, but the bold ambition makes sense for Hashimoto.
After all, building a terminal emulator from scratch in Zig (which is unconventional) with host OS integration as a non-negotiable aspect, while others opted for lowest-common-dominator UIs and Electron wrappers was equally bold.
Before getting to how this change will (or won’t) affect it, here’s a quick reminder on what Ghostty actually is…
What is Ghostty?
Not familiar with Ghostty?
It is a cross-platform and open source terminal that is fast, uses native UI toolkits and respects the OS it runs on (keyboard shortcuts, etc). It uses GTK4/libadwaita on Linux so looks and behaves the way you would expect a native GTK app too – it feels native because it is native.
Features at a glance:
- GPU-accelerated rendering – OpenGL (Linux) or Metal (macOS)
- Proper platform integration – native tabs, menus, system fonts
- Zero configuration or all the configuration – config file available
- Split panes, tabs, client side decoration – the stuff you’d expect
- Ligature support, custom shaders, Kitty graphics protocol
- Written in Zig – uses Swift for a few macOS bits
“But my current terminal already does that” — yes; Ghostty isn’t out to reinvent the command line experience with its cross-platform approach, simply build it properly using modern tooling and with fewer compromises.
As Linux users we are spoilt for choice when it comes to options for fast, GPU-accelerated terminal emulators that do what a terminal emulator should. This is presumably why Ghostty, per comments you leave below the line, is often met with a “and?” reaction.
For macOS (and Windows1) or those who work across OSes often, Ghostty’s proposition is more appealing, not least because it is free of the kind of feature creep, VC-backed AI pivots and non-native toolkits cross-platform rivals opt for.
—no, that’s not shade at you Warp. You’re all grown up into an Agentic IDE now and you no longer identify as a mere terminal.
A Non-Profit Terminal – OTT?
Hashimoto says “nothing changes for Ghostty” as a result of this. The technical goals are the same, it’s still open source (MIT license), and the roadmap — ‘better Ghostty GUI releases and libghostty’ — haven’t changed as a result.
Making Ghostty a non-profit might be technically unnecessary – most open source projects exist solely as open-source projects, right? – but it is clear Hashimoto is committed to the project staying focused on what’s best for its users’ needs – not his.
Which is somewhat cute given Ghostty sprouted into existence as a personal project: to scratch the itch Hashimoto had for a fast, GPU-accelerated terminal (written in Zig) with native host integration, offering the features he wanted.
Chiefly, this is about money (donation status, money going to the project, financial transparency, etc) and moving ‘applicable names, marks, and intellectual property associated with Ghostty’ to Hack Club to live under the auspices of nonprofit.
Hashimoto will remain project lead and have ‘authority on all decisions’, but he notes that the new nonprofit structure ‘lays the groundwork for an eventual future beyond this model’ – i.e., the project can outlive him.
I made Ghostty my daily driver a while back. Seeing the project shift to non-profit status means no jump-scare from remote login requirements owing to it being bought out by VC/investors who need to monetise the user base. That’s worth something.
Get Ghostty
Ghostty is available for macOS (binary download) and Linux (build from source, use the Nix flake, or grab a community package for Arch, Fedora, Debian — a community project provides Ghostty DEBs for Ubuntu).
- A Ghostty Windows is no longer officially planned but older/earlier builds were available unofficial, and the libghostty core could be used to power one – this is open source, after all. ↩︎