What are Open-Source Happiness Packets?
People are generally much more loved than we think we are. But while it's easy for many to complain when they don't like something, we're often fairly silent when things are good. Open-source communities are no different, especially when our main communication channels are textual and virtual.
However, the feeling that you made a difference, that your work matters and has value, and that the people you work with are happy to work with you, is an awesome and important feeling. With Open-Source Happiness Packets, we're trying to spread that feeling.
How does it work?
Openly expressing appreciation, gratitude, or happiness to other people can be difficult. This is especially true when you don't know them very well. Many of us come from cultures in which people are not open by default about such feelings, and naturally feel uncomfortable or even creepy to share them.
Open-Source Happiness Packets is a very simple platform to anonymously reach out to the people that you appreciate or to whom you are thankful in your open-source community. Your message can be sent anonymously if you feel uncomfortable to share your name with the recipient. Of course, we encourage you to share your name, but it's completely optional!
Happiness Archive
If both the sender and the recipient agree, we can publish the Happiness Packet on the website. With this, we're building an archive of open-source happiness that people and communities can use to draw inspiration.
As an example, here are two random messages from our archive:
Anonymous message
Thank you for being with me and always push me to my best, thanks for all smiles and hugs you gave me, thanks for being the best soul mate and wife ever.
Anonymous message
It's hard for me to pin when I first saw you pop up, start saying hello, and bringing with you the reign of bunnehs and cookie noms, but whenever it happened, I'm glad that it did. In a short time, you've made no short work of mobilizing a new, critical area of development with .NET in Fedora. It's so exciting to hear that this is happening and to see the active community that so easily formed around it. And hardly months after you started, you already have some Google Summer of Code slots you're putting out to help students get involved, learn about open source for the first time, and have an impact on something so huge in the open source community. I do know it has been a team effort, but this is in part to your tact and skill as a community leader and how you help motivate others to want to contribute.
Thanks for all of the work you do in Fedora and beyond, and to help make a strong, powerful impression of women in open source and what we are capable of. :) It's exciting for me to see people like you helping lead the way, in one way or another! We're lucky to have people like you in the open source community.