Mitchell Hashimoto, one of the founders of HashiCorp and lead developer behind Ghostty, a GPU-accelerated open-source terminal emulator launched in 2023, announced that the app has formally become a non-profit project through fiscal sponsorship by Hack Club, a registered 501(c)(3) organization.
In Ghostty’s case, Hack Club now manages compliance, donations, accounting, and public financial transparency. Hashimoto says this structure reinforces Ghostty’s commitment to remaining free and open source, provides legal assurances to users and contributors, and establishes a sustainable foundation beyond any single individual’s involvement.
According to its maintainer, the goal has always been to ensure that the project would ultimately be governed by a mission-driven entity rather than by private ownership. A non-profit structure removes concerns about commercial shifts, changes in purpose, or the possibility of the project being sold or repurposed.
“I believe 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.”
From a technical standpoint, nothing changes for users. Ghostty continues under the same MIT license, and development priorities remain focused on improving the GUI versions and advancing libghostty. What does change is how the project can receive and manage funding.
With non-profit status, Ghostty can now accept tax-deductible donations in the United States, enabling new opportunities to support contributors, upstream dependencies, community events, and operational costs. All financial activity will be publicly visible through Hack Club’s transparent accounting system.
Lastly, all project-related names, marks, and intellectual property have now been transferred to Hack Club and operate under the non-profit umbrella. Copyright remains with individual contributors under the existing licensing model. Leadership for the project remains unchanged, with Hashimoto continuing as the final decision-maker while laying groundwork for broader governance in the future.
For more information, see the announcement on Hashimoto’s blog.
