December 3, 2025
Ghostty is now fiscally sponsored by Hack Club, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit.
Fiscal sponsorship is a legal and financial arrangement in which a recognized non-profit extends its tax-exempt status to a project that aligns with its mission. This allows Ghostty to operate as a charitable initiative while Hack Club manages compliance, donations, accounting, and governance oversight.
Being non-profit clearly demonstrates our commitment to keeping Ghostty free and open source for everyone. It paves the way for a model for sustainable development beyond my personal involvement. And it also provides important legal protections and assurances to the people and communities that adopt and use Ghostty.
Why a Non-Profit?
Since the beginning of the project in 2023 and the private beta days of Ghostty, I've repeatedly expressed my intention that Ghostty legally become a non-profit. This intention stems from several core beliefs I have.
First, I want to lay bricks for a sustainable future for Ghostty that doesn't depend on my personal involvement technically or financially. Financially, I am still the largest donor to the project, and I intend to remain so, but a non-profit structure allows others to contribute financially without fear of misappropriation or misuse of funds (as protected by legal requirements and oversight from the fiscal sponsor).
Second, I want to squelch any possible concerns about a "rug pull". A non-profit structure provides enforceable assurances: the mission cannot be quietly changed, funds cannot be diverted to private benefit, and the project cannot be sold off or repurposed for commercial gain. The structure legally binds Ghostty to the public-benefit purpose it was created to serve.
Finally, despite being decades-old technology, terminals and terminal-related technologies remain foundational to modern computing and software infrastructure. They're often out of the limelight, but they're ever present on developer machines, embedded in IDEs, visible as read-only consoles for continuous integration and cloud services, and still one of the primary ways remote access is done on servers around the world.
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.
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