By ByteBot
Mitchell Hashimoto, co-founder of HashiCorp, announced this week that Ghostty terminal emulator is transitioning to nonprofit status via fiscal sponsorship through Hack Club. Released publicly in December 2024 after a two-year private beta, Ghostty combines GPU-accelerated rendering with platform-native UIs, delivering 4x faster performance than iTerm2 and Kitty while matching Alacritty’s speed with significantly more features. The nonprofit decision challenges the conventional wisdom that developer tools need VC funding to succeed—Hashimoto explicitly chose to avoid commercialization, instead creating a sustainable structure where donations fund contributor compensation, not the creator.
This isn’t just another terminal release. It’s a statement about how open source developer tools should be funded in 2025.
What Is Ghostty and Why It’s Fast
Ghostty is a cross-platform terminal emulator (macOS and Linux, Windows not yet supported) written primarily in Zig that uses platform-native UIs—SwiftUI on macOS, GTK4 on Linux—instead of cross-platform toolkits. The rendering architecture leverages Metal on macOS and OpenGL on Linux, maintaining roughly 60fps under heavy load with a dedicated I/O thread that minimizes jitter.
The performance claims aren’t marketing hype. According to official benchmarks and community testing, Ghostty reads plain text 4x faster than iTerm2 and Kitty, and 2x faster than Terminal.app. It matches Alacritty’s legendary speed while providing tabs, splits, ligatures, themes, and automatic shell integration—features Alacritty intentionally omits for simplicity.
One developer on Hacker News reported Ghostty handled “half a million results in the blink of an eye” during database work. Antirez, creator of Redis, noted “for development of systems it makes a big difference” when dealing with large outputs. The Metal renderer even supports ligatures without dropping to CPU rendering, something iTerm2 can’t do.
The Nonprofit Model: 7% Fee vs. Years of Legal Work
Hashimoto chose fiscal sponsorship through Hack Club rather than creating a standalone 501c3 nonprofit. The distinction matters: fiscal sponsorship provides immediate tax-deductible donations, financial oversight, legal guardrails, and IRS compliance support for a 7% administrative fee. Creating a standalone nonprofit takes months or years for IRS approval and requires ongoing legal and accounting overhead.
“I explicitly do not want to make money from Ghostty, but I want contributors to be compensated to a certain amount,” Hashimoto explained in a recent podcast. “Ghostty needs to live in a nonprofit, needs to be totally unencumbered.” The IP donation to the nonprofit structure can’t be clawed back—it sends an irreversible signal about the project’s long-term intentions.
The nonprofit structure ensures Ghostty cannot be sold, pivoted toward commercial interests, or shuttered on a whim. Its purpose and stewardship are bound to public benefit, not investor returns or acquisition targets. For developers embedding Ghostty via libghostty, this provides confidence that the project won’t suddenly introduce commercial licensing or be acquired by a company with conflicting interests.
Getting Started with Ghostty
Installation varies by platform but remains straightforward. macOS users have the simplest path via Homebrew:
brew install --cask ghosttyLinux users on Arch, Fedora, or NixOS get official packages:
# Arch Linux
pacman -S ghostty
# Fedora
dnf copr enable pgdev/ghostty
dnf install ghosttyUbuntu and Debian users currently need to build from source, which requires installing dependencies and Zig:
sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev libadwaita-1-dev
sudo snap install --beta zig --classic
git clone https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty.git
cd ghostty
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFastConfiguration uses a simple text file at ~/.config/ghostty/config rather than complex Lua scripts (WezTerm) or GUI preferences (iTerm2):
font-family = "JetBrains Mono"
font-size = 14
theme = "tokyonight"
window-padding-x = 8
window-padding-y = 8Shell integration works automatically with bash, zsh, fish, and elvish—no manual setup required. This simplicity removes friction that plagues other terminal emulators.
When to Use Ghostty vs Alternatives
Terminal emulator choice depends on what you prioritize. Ghostty fills the “best of all worlds” niche: speed plus features plus native UI without forced tradeoffs. But it’s not the right choice for everyone.
Choose Ghostty if you want a modern, native, minimal setup that handles inline images and matches Alacritty’s speed while providing iTerm2’s features. Choose iTerm2 if you live in tmux all day (native tmux integration is transformative) or need Python API integration and triggers. Choose Alacritty if you want the absolute lightest terminal and don’t need tabs, ligatures, or configuration beyond basics.
Choose WezTerm if you want to program your terminal with Lua hooks and orchestrate complex local/remote session workflows. Choose Kitty if you need the richest image and TUI ecosystem and don’t mind its opinionated design choices.
Migration patterns show iTerm2 users switching for GPU acceleration and better performance, Alacritty users moving to gain tabs and splits without needing tmux, and Kitty users choosing Ghostty for native UI and rendering improvements. The platform-native approach means familiar UX patterns rather than custom cross-platform widgets that feel alien on every OS.
Community Reception and Known Gaps
The Hacker News discussion of Ghostty’s 1.0 release hit 584 points and topped the front page. Developers praised the performance gains, native UI approach, and Hashimoto’s humility in acknowledging competitors like Kitty, WezTerm, and Foot as “excellent terminals with different design goals.”
But the 1.0 release isn’t perfect. Multiple developers noted the absence of scrollback search as surprising for a 1.0 milestone. Quick terminal mode (quake-style dropdown) lacks tab support initially. Windows isn’t supported yet—the roadmap marks it as unavailable—which is a deal-breaker for cross-platform teams.
Linux packaging shows strength on Arch, Fedora, and NixOS but leaves Debian and RHEL users building from source. The homepage documentation isn’t immediately clear about what Ghostty is or why it exists without clicking through to detailed docs. These are polish issues, not fundamental problems, but they matter for adoption.
The HashiCorp Lessons: Why 99% of Open Source Projects Are Underfunded
Hashimoto’s experience at HashiCorp—VC-backed, eventually acquired by IBM for $5.1 billion—directly informed his nonprofit choice for Ghostty. He researched open source sustainability and found a brutal reality: 99% of projects receive under $1 million per year in donations, but enterprise-grade maintenance costs “dramatically more than a million dollars a year.” HashiCorp’s per-project salaries for supporting Terraform, Vagrant, and related tools far exceeded what typical open source donations could fund.
“I conducted research with accountants examining all open source 501c3 organizations (excluding 501c6 organizations like the Linux Foundation) and found only single-digit numbers had over a million dollars a year in donations,” Hashimoto explained. The sustainability math simply doesn’t work for the vast majority of open source projects relying on donations.
Fiscal sponsorship addresses this by reducing overhead dramatically. The 7% Hack Club fee covers financial oversight, legal compliance, donation processing, and IRS reporting—services that would cost far more if handled independently. Projects get nonprofit infrastructure in weeks, not years, and can focus on development rather than administrative burden.
This model is especially valuable for developer tools where community trust is critical. Commercial pivots destroy that trust. Ghostty’s nonprofit structure ensures it can’t suddenly introduce premium tiers, be acquired by a vendor with conflicting products, or sunset features to drive paid upgrades. The code and community remain protected.
Key Takeaways
Ghostty proves you don’t have to choose between terminal performance and features anymore. The GPU-accelerated rendering matches Alacritty’s speed while providing the tabs, splits, themes, and shell integration that make iTerm2 and Kitty popular. Platform-native UIs mean familiar patterns rather than compromise.
The nonprofit announcement challenges the assumption that VC funding is the only path for sustainable developer tools. Fiscal sponsorship through organizations like Hack Club provides nonprofit infrastructure at 7% overhead—dramatically lower than creating and managing a standalone 501c3. This model deserves more attention from open source maintainers considering funding options.
For developers on macOS or Linux looking to upgrade their terminal, Ghostty is worth testing. Install via Homebrew on macOS (brew install --cask ghostty) or check official packages for Arch, Fedora, and NixOS at ghostty.org. Ubuntu users can build from source following the documentation on GitHub.
The project isn’t perfect—missing scrollback search and no Windows support yet are real limitations—but the combination of speed, features, and nonprofit structure makes Ghostty a compelling option for terminal power users who want performance without sacrificing functionality.
