Farewell Gatsby — it’s been one heck of a ride.

In February, Netlify announced its acquisition of Gatsby.js and Gatsby Cloud. I was initially optimistic that this move was going to be a merger of two great players in the JAMstack space and a win-win for everyone. However, it appears to me that this was the beginning of the writing on the wall for the framework I’ve so loved and advocated for for nearly half a decade now.

Netlify assures us they are continuing to support and develop the Gatsby project. While this is true to a degree, some additional factors make this statement a bit thinly veiled to me.

Velocity has slowed

It only takes a look at the Github insights to gain a picture of how much development has slowed. It seems Netlify kept things going for a few months but now it’s dwindled down to next to nothing.

Founders no longer involved

Gatsby’s co-founders Kyle Mathews and Sam Bhagwat are no longer with Netlify or contributing to the project. In addition to these key losses, critical members of the Gatsby team have been made redundant.

Innovation is faltering

Aside from adaptors, there isn’t really anything released of note. This time last year was the launch of Gatsby 5 which included great features such as partial hydration, Slices, GraphiQl v2, Head and Script components. A year later, there isn’t really much of note.

What’s next?

Well, Gatsby’s been an amazing launchpad into the world of React. So, I’ll be focussing my efforts building on the best frameworks for React. Currently, that leads me to Next.js but there are also a lot of new exciting projects in this space (Remix, Astro, etc.). While I do believe Netlify will continue to maintain and support Gatsby for a while to come, I can’t recommend you start your next project with it.