爆速ターミナル「Ghostty」、GitHubから完全撤退へ

今話題のターミナルエミュレータ「Ghostty」が、GitHubからの移行を発表しました。今後は公式サイトの独自プラットフォームへ完全に活動拠点を移すことになります。GitHub上のイシューやPRの取り扱いなど、今後の影響に注目です。

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 really has been remarkable watching GitHub just crumble as an organization. There's a lot of discussion about why: the switch from being independent to being part of Microsoft, having resources pushed to Copilot instead of core service, the organization structure itself, a reliance on vibe coding, etc etc.

Regardless of the reason, it's undeniable that GitHub is facing some serious issues. The unofficial status page[1] tells a horrifying story.

I would absolutely love to get some insider perspective on this (if only to learn how to prevent it from happening anywhere I work), but I think it's clear to anyone who has been paying any attention that GitHub is a sinking ship and the only reason people haven't abandoned it already is inertia. Considering how much else is changing in software right now I don't think inertia is enough to sustain a company.

1. https://mrshu.github.io/github-statuses/ (https://mrshu.github.io/github-statuses/)

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.

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.

I can appreciate Hashimoto's genuine feelings about Github, and the world of open-source software development that it opened for him and that he spent a significant chunk of his life participating in.

On the other hand, I can't help but think that some of this heartbreak would have been avoidable, if only he possessed more of the Richard-Stallman-esque attitude that non-free software is inherently suspect and unethical. Github has always been non-free software hosted by someone else, and run according to its owners' rules and for its owners' benefit, not ultimately the end user. This was true in 2008 and it's true today.

I've also used Github for a significant chunk of my life, often because I had to for my job. But I've never developed an emotional attachment to it. Indeed, I have long been annoyed that Github is someone else's proprietary software, that does what it can to structurally lock users into their platform despite being built upon free-software git.

I've never been able to love software that requires an email-based account and accepting terms of service and that doesn't work in Iran because the company that runs it obeys US sanctions law.

So without reservation on my end, I'm glad to see that ghostty is moving off of github to something else.

To the "Git is distributed!" crowd: the issue isn't Git, it's the infrastructure we rely on around it: issues, PRs, Actions, etc.

A suggestion: use git-bug https://github.com/git-bug/git-bug (https://github.com/git-bug/git-bug) in addition to migrating to another forge like Codeberg. It saves issues, PRs etc in git itself (not on a branch - on a specially crafted ref). It offers two way sync with a lot of providers.

Other VCSes like fossil store issues alongside the repo. I think it's appropriate because in a sense, issues are part of what gives meaning to the code (like documentation)

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 eight years ago for nearly 8 billion dollars. you spent another 2bn on minecraft to clinch the deal with young developers and the code camp kids.

Youve lost the OS, and the server realm. Lose the developers, and youre on your way to becoming the Xerox of the 21st century.

This seems like a great opportunity for new platforms who are rethinking the OSS space to finally gain the traction they need to be effective. For a collaborative platform, quantity is key, and I am hopeful that someone who is interested in advancing the software space will become the new go-to. This isn't to say that GitHub hasn't been innovating, but at least from my perspective, the way we've used git for the past however-many-years has remained basically constant.

Some projects that seem interesting:

• https://tangled.org/ (https://tangled.org/) seems to be building out cool and exciting ways to write and interact with code (and they're distributed on the ATProto! But notably that's not their core selling point)
• Microservices like https://pico.sh/ (https://pico.sh/) and https://sr.ht/ (https://sr.ht/) feel like fresh air...

I'm happy that raw git + mailing lists works great for the linux project, but can the rest of us all agree we actually do need issues & PRs? And that it's super painful to lose all this context when platform hopping, or when the service unilaterally decides to deplatform someone?

So where are we going? Mitchell will be deciding for Ghostty. If github's current trajectory is anything to go by, everyone else will need to decide where to go sooner rather than later.

I'm worried that it will be a Babel scattering event and this open source superpower that github catalyzed (how to describe it?) will just evaporate.

I'm also worried that wherever we go next could have the same fate as github.

So what then? Radicle is the only thing that I've seen that could theoretically 'solve' the problem, though it still needs a lot of work: https://radicle.dev/ (https://radicle.dev/)

Im still waiting for... Basically anyone that has used TFS (what microsoft had/pushed before acquiring github) to do a similar post, detailing how they miss the tool original concept. I'm sitting down, don't worry about me.