--- title: Game of Trees – Git-based version control from OpenBSD folks description: Game of Trees (Got) is a version control system developed by OpenBSD developers that prioritizes ease of use and simplicity over flexibility. It is freely... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/game-of-trees-git-based-version-control-from-openbsd-folks-ywh9vyy3s twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Game of Trees – Git-based version control from OpenBSD folks | daily.dev og:description: Game of Trees (Got) is a version control system developed by OpenBSD developers that prioritizes ease of use and simplicity over flexibility. It is freely... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/game-of-trees-git-based-version-control-from-openbsd-folks-ywh9vyy3s og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/YWh9vyy3s.png og:image:alt: Game of Trees – Git-based version control from OpenBSD folks og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Game of Trees – Git-based version control from OpenBSD folks **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 1 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Game of Trees (Got) is a version control system developed by OpenBSD developers that prioritizes ease of use and simplicity over flexibility. It is freely available under a BSD license and is still under active development. Ports exist for OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux, DragonflyBSD, and macOS. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 22 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-07-24). **TL;DR:** The community views 'Got' (Game of Trees) as a niche, OpenBSD-specific Git-compatible VCS driven by BSD licensing and OpenBSD coding philosophy, with modest interest but little expectation of broad adoption. **Sentiment:** 30% positive · 50% mixed · 20% skeptical **The case for** - It provides a BSD-licensed alternative to Git for the OpenBSD ecosystem. - It aims for simplicity and ease of use over flexibility. - Its use of OpenBSD security primitives (pledge/unveil) makes it safer for handling untrusted data. **The pushback** - It is seen as ideologically driven and unlikely to gain wide attention outside OpenBSD. - The project is nearly a decade old, so this is not news to most. - Its OpenBSD-specific goals (pledge/unveil) make it poorly suited for cross-platform or Linux development. **Hottest debate:** Whether Got's motivation is primarily about BSD licensing or a broader set of OpenBSD-community values and security goals. **Open questions** - Will Got ever be included in OpenBSD base? - How do pledge(2) and unveil(2) concretely improve security for a VCS compared to Linux capabilities? **Highlights** > Yes and no, my experience with it is that it is trying to be a minimal Git format-compatible tool that conforms with the coding style and practices of the OpenBSD community, along with their style of development: patches onto mailing lists. It is likely the hope of its developers that it would be included into OpenBSD base at some point. So, true, the license is a part of it, but one part of many. There is also this: https://gothub.org > — [ninjin on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49036325) > The web site is seven years old, and the project nine and a half years. So this isn’t anything new. > — [layer8 on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49039203) > I was reading more into this specific in the project goals: > Consistently use pledge(2) and unveil(2) across the code base. Both link to man pages that seem rather OpenBSD-specific to me. Seems an interesting requirement/goal, but I'm afraid I don't know enough OpenBSD-specifics to know much more about why this is a goal or what the project gains from having it as a goal even if I can appreciate it as a goal that certainly seems unlikely to upstream into git itself. (ETA: Which yeah, it does seem like the Comparisons page includes some of that reasoning, but not well enough I caught on first skim and I'm still not sure I understand it on second reading, but interesting.) > — [WorldMaker on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49039987) > i don't know OpenBSD either, but i am guessing they are similar to linux capabilities where a process can reject certain permissions, or where you can remove permissions before starting the process. so the goal is pretty clear. make those apps safer to reduce the risk of exploits. this goal goes through all apps written by OpenBSD devs. for apps that deal with foreign user data that is an important feature. > — [em-bee on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49041030) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49033412) · 55 points · 20 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46930776) · 5 points · 2 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [『 0x61 』- /var/log](https://daily.dev/posts/0x61---var-log-dv0lvrua8) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Sign-up for Game of Trees Hub](https://daily.dev/posts/sign-up-for-game-of-trees-hub-wvlvkplfv) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Epic Games Presented Open-Sourced Version Control System](https://daily.dev/posts/epic-games-presented-open-sourced-version-control-system-hda9nhyd9) · 80 LEVEL · 98 upvotes · 6 comments - [Linus wrote Git in about 10 days, so I asked my local LLM to build something similar with one prompt](https://daily.dev/posts/linus-wrote-git-in-about-10-days-so-i-asked-my-local-llm-to-build-something-similar-with-one-prompt-c0eheydp4) · XDA Developers · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#version-control](https://daily.dev/tags/version-control), [#openbsd](https://daily.dev/tags/openbsd) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/game-of-trees-git-based-version-control-from-openbsd-folks-ywh9vyy3s) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Game of Trees – Git-based version control from OpenBSD folks","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/game-of-trees-git-based-version-control-from-openbsd-folks-ywh9vyy3s","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/game-of-trees-git-based-version-control-from-openbsd-folks-ywh9vyy3s"},"datePublished":"2026-07-24T15:12:07.936Z","dateModified":"2026-07-24T20:37:32.749Z","description":"Game of Trees (Got) is a version control system developed by OpenBSD developers that prioritizes ease of use and simplicity over flexibility. 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