Pledging Another $400,000 to the Zig Software Foundation – Mitchell Hashimoto<br>Mitchell Hashimoto

Mitchell Hashimoto<br>Pledging Another $400,000 to the Zig Software Foundation<br>June 21, 2026<br>My family is pledging another $400,0001 to the<br>Zig Software Foundation (ZSF). This brings<br>our total pledged support for ZSF to $700,000, after our<br>initial donation in 2024.

Zig continues to earn my respect as a technical project and as a community. The<br>2026 devlog shows steady progress on the<br>hard problems of building an excellent language and compiler. I also deeply<br>respect the project's approach to maintainership and community, reflected in<br>initiatives like Loris Cro's<br>Contributor Poker and Zig's AI Ban.<br>That philosophy continues to attract and develop some of the most<br>talented people in open source.

Recently, Zig's strict no-LLM contribution policy became a public topic of<br>discussion again, especially in the context of Bun's Zig fork and Rust rewrite.<br>I have no problem with what Bun did, I think Bun is a great project, and<br>I'm not interested in turning this into a Bun post. Instead, what stood out to<br>me was how quickly people villainized one another. Too much of the<br>conversation lacked empathy and respect for viewpoints different from our own.

I use AI heavily. I've written about<br>my AI adoption journey and<br>shipping real features with AI assistance.<br>I'm also quite vocal about<br>remaining rational about its capabilities<br>and frustrated with its negative impacts on open source.

The point is that I have opinions. Those opinions don't fully align with<br>ZSF's approach. And yet, I have nothing but respect for ZSF: the people,<br>the policies, and the project. Part of what makes the internet and open source<br>great is that projects can be weird and different. They can set unusual<br>boundaries, build their own culture, and pursue quality in ways that won't make<br>sense to everyone.

Zig is exceptional software: ambitious,<br>practical, independent, and unusually serious about quality. Ghostty exists in<br>large part because Zig made it possible for me to build the kind of software I<br>wanted to build. This is why I support Zig.

I'm proud to support Zig and the Zig Software Foundation again. Please<br>consider donating if you can.

Footnotes

$200,000 per year split over two years, the same structure as our 2024 donation. ↩

June 21, 2026