We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git
blog.gitbutler.com40 points by ellieh 4 hours ago
40 points by ellieh 4 hours ago
I feel like I really need to learn how to raise money. For $17M, one could probably build a vacuum robot prototype that’ll also clean up all of the kids toys and sort LEGO bricks by colour and size. Parents worldwide would love it.
But instead, we get a replacement for Git. And I didn’t even bother to click the link because I’m fine with how Git works. On the list of pain points in my life, “what comes after Git” has roughly the same priority as “try out a more exciting shower gel”. But did you ever step on a LEGO brick while walking to the bathroom at night? That pain is immediately obvious.
Why is nobody solving actual problems anymore?
For what it's worth, that LEGO vacuum does exist[0], it was on Shark Tank[1]. I assume they stole the idea from The Office. It doesn't sort the bricks, but I assume that was more of a stretch goal based on the insane amount of money being discussed. After all, the LEGO vacuum only cost $495k to get to market.
That one needs to be operated manually. I was thinking more along the lines of robot dog + OCR + 6 dof arm on the robot's back.
This video is from 8 years ago:
https://youtu.be/wXxrmussq4E?si=bgDdDvZODVov3sSC&t=15
I'm sure, by now we could make them for <$1k per robot, if we wanted to.
EDIT: BTW did you see that the page you linked to has this at the bottom of their landing page:
"Example product"
"This area is used to describe your product’s details. Tell customers about the look, feel, and style of your product. Add details on color, materials used, sizing, and where it was made."
so I wonder if they actually sell anything.
> EDIT: BTW did you see that the page you linked to has this at the bottom of their landing page:
I'm not seeing it. When I search for "example" nothing comes up, but maybe I'm looking wrong.
I see it on Amazon as well, with reviews and videos from "customers", so I assume it's not vaporware and that is more an issue with people not filling out the full website template, which is also not a great sign.
https://www.amazon.com/Pick-Up-Bricks-Compatible-Accessories...
I like git, it works perfectly fine on my command line.
I do wonder, though, if it would have been designed differently if the whole “code forge” sort of application (or whatever GitHub and the like are called) was envisioned at the time. Pull requests aren’t even a concept in git proper, right?
It seems like a kind of important type of tool. Even though git is awesome, we don’t need a monoculture.
git request-pull
Generates a pretty email requesting someone to pull commits from your online repository. It's really meant for Linus to pull a whole bunch of already-reviewed changes from a maintainer's integration branch.
The rough equivalent to GitHub's "pull request" is the "patch series", produced by:
git format-patch
Which lets you provide a "cover letter" (PR description), and formats each commit as a diff that can be quoted inline in an email reply for code review.
Sorceforge predates git by about 11 years. As do several other projects like google code. Its not a new idea. Or basically most source control systems. Git, actually, is the more unique idea, of a DVCS... versus a cVCS...
git is not a new idea, various features of git existed in various SCMs for decades. The distributed aspect existed in Bitkeeper too, for example.
But it took a big brain with a systemic view of the problem and solutions space to bring them all together - in a lighting fast implementation to boot.
> or whatever GitHub and the like are called
GitHub is a social networking site that just so happens to have code hosting related features.
> I do wonder, though, if it would have been designed differently if the whole “code forge” sort of application (or whatever GitHub and the like are called) was envisioned at the time.
I would argue that it was purposefully designed in contrast against that model.
GitHub is full of git anti patterns.
Perforce had change sets and there were lots of tools for code reviews that worked a lot like GitHub before GitHub (review board, phabricator, another one I can’t remember).
They sure aren’t. Before github you set up remotes or emailed patches.
À pull request is just you requesting someone to pull from you in git proper.
So the maintainer adds you as a remote and pulls from you.
> Why is nobody solving actual problems anymore?
Because that’s too risky for investors.
The author is a founder of GitHub, he could raise $17m for “git but it’s called pit and a repository is a hole and committing code is called burying it” if he wanted to, investors care about pedigree.
pedigree is a great word here and being upfront about it (if true) would make for some fun VC slogans:
"We've replaced due diligence with a DNA test."
"No mutts, no miracles. Three generations of wealth or GTFO."
"Your bloodline is fine. Don't fret the cap table."
"You forgot to attach the pitch deck, but we really like your family crest."
17M seems like a rounding error these days with all the AI investments. Probably some spare cash in a fund that needed to be closed or something.
Solving actual problems are hard, and even harder to get money for (see research). Most VC’s are in it for the returns only, not actually making a change, there are some exceptions but they are far and few apart.
I for one can't wait for open Ai to buy them and reroute every git commit to chatgpt.
I feel like git started to feel outdated overnight as the company I work for went agentic development first.
I fought for years trying to convince my colleagues to write good commit messages. Now Claude is writing great commit messages but since I'm no longer looking at code - I never see them. I don't think Claude uses them either.
Branches are now irrelevant since all agents work in worktrees by default. But worktrees are awkward since you run out of disk space fast (since we're in a monorepo).
There is a constant discussion ongoing whether we commit our plans or not. Some argue that the whole conversation leading up to the PR should be included (stupid imo).
The game changed completely. It isn't weird that people are wondering if the tools should as well.
Definitely feels like there's opportunity to build something better
You guys cannot be serious, it feels like Poe’s Law day everyday in here!
It really is insane how much this topic is dividing technical folks.
What GP wrote sounds like an absolute nightmare of tech debt and unmaintainable spaghetti code that nobody understands anymore to me.
But I guess for some people the increased speed outweighs all other concerns?
"Where are we? Are we where we wanted to be?"
"I'm not sure. But at least we got here fast."
I have to agree that the comment you are referring to seems to be nothing other than sarcasm despite that it doesn’t read that way at all. If it’s true, the world is definitely in trouble…
Have you considered returning to actual software engineering and workflows that tools were designed to support instead of playing the LLM slot machine?
I recently switched to Jujutsu (jj) and it made me realize that “what comes after Git” might already exist.
It turns out the snapshot model is a perfect fit for AI-assisted development. I can iterate freely without thinking about commits or worrying about saving known-good versions.
You can just mess around and make it presentable later, which Git never really let you do nicely.
Plus there’s essentially zero learning curve, since all the models know how to use JJ really well.
Why does it take $17m to beat Git?
How will you ever get the network effects needed to get sustained users with a commercial tool?
Given Git was created because BitKeeper, a commercial tool, pulled their permission for kernel developers to use their tool aren’t we ignoring a lesson there?
Apparently it takes $17M and a whole team full of people to do what one guy with a chip on his shoulder could do for free.
On one hand that’s true. On the other, the “one guy” there is, like, the guy who does impressive projects “just as a hobby.”
Uhh, to be fair, if the goal was only to recreate git from 2005, it probably wouldn't cost $17M. I'd hazard a guess that they're recreating modern git and the emergent stuff like issues, PRs, projects, etc. I've also heard that the core devs for git are essentially paid a salary to maintain git.
Linus built git in 8 days or something.
Nah, on the 7th day he rested... On the 8th he apologized for his behavior having learned the error of his ways.
On the ninth he roasted some fool.
I wish we had old Linus back just one day to review some vibecoded patch to Linux. I’d love to hear him rant about it.
Why are investors still investing in SAAS products like this? I've heard some investors made rather blunt statements about such investments being a very hard sell to them at this point. Clearly somebody believes differently here.
We have AI now. AI tools are pretty handy with Git. I've not manually resolved git conflicts in months now. That's more or less a solved problem for me. Mostly codex creates and manages pull requests for me. I also have it manage my GitHub issues on some projects. For some things, I also let it do release management with elaborate checklists, release prep, and driving automation for package deployment via github actions triggered via tags, and then creating the gh release and attaching binaries. In short, I just give a thumbs up and all the right things happen.
To be blunt, I think a SAAS service that tries to make Git nicer to use is a going to be a bit redundant. I don't think AI tools really need that help. Or a git replacement. And people will mostly be delegating whatever it is they still do manually with Git pretty soon. I've made that switch already because I'm an early adopter. And because I'm lazy and it seems AI is more disciplined at following good practices and process than I am.
If you think like that why invest in software at all; the AI will do everything?
Does AI make reading or writing stacked PRs any nicer? No, it does not.
It does though.. you don't have agents that can connect to github or wherever your git mirrors are and comment on PRs?
A lot of people seem confused about how they raised the money, but it’s actually a pretty easy VC pitch.
- It’s from one of GitHub’s cofounders.
- GitHub had a $7.5B exit.
- And the story is: AI is completely changing how software gets built, with plenty of proof points already showing up in the billions in revenue being made from things like Claude Code, Cusor, Codex, etc.
So the pitch is basically: back the team that can build the universal infrastructure for AI and agentic coding.
To all the salty people- the person cofounded GitHub. It's not the product that raised 17M, it's the person.
I was going to be snarky, but Scott Chacon is a serious person, so we'll see!
I like what I see in the video, it would solve a lot of problems I end up having with git.
That said, I find the branding confusing. They say this is what comes after git, but in the name and the overall functionality, seems to just be an abstraction on top of git, not a new source control tool to replace git.
The source code is hosted on Github: https://github.com/gitbutlerapp/gitbutler
I was really hoping we'd see some competition to Github, but no, this is competition for the likes of the Conductor App. Disappointed, I must say. I am tired of using and waiting for alternatives of, Github.
The diff view in particular makes me rage. CodeMirror has a demo where they render a million lines. Github starts dying when rendering a couple thousand. There are options like Codeberg but the experience is unfortunately even worse.
I can't see any significant difference between their "Operations Log":
https://docs.gitbutler.com/cli-guides/cli-tutorial/operation...
and git's reflog:
I'd like to see some kind of "whitespace aware" smart diff in whatever comes after git
I thought gitbutler was not a great name, but then I saw their CLI command name is "but"
GitHub CEO also raised 60M for 'entire' to bring agent context to git. The dust is yet to settle here as it's difficult to bring a paridgm shift from today's git workflows
Raising a bunch of money to recreate the wheel.
Isn't that jj? Hopefully no one tells the VCs.
To me jj is an ok porcelain for git, but I find it worse than magit. Sure, it has some tricks under their sleves for merging, but I just don't run into weird merges and never needed more advanced commands like rerere.
What I'd would expect of the next vcs is to go beyond vcs of the files, but of the environment so works on my machine™ and configuring your git-hooks and CI becomes a thing of the past.
Do we need an LSP-like abstraction for environments and build systems instead of yet another definitive build system? IDK, my solution so far is sticking to nix, x86_64, and ignoring Windows and Mac, which is obviously not good enough for like 90%+ of devs.
Rather confusing, your name has Git in it, “to build what comes after git”, what comes after your own Git product? Good luck.
[flagged]
Pijul?
Git has issues, but it works pretty well once you learn it and it's basically universal. Will be hard to dislodge.