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
I wanted to say that I enjoyed your workshop on OpenStreetMaps at OSCAL 2017! You did a great job with it and it's exciting to know about the great things happening with OSM in Albania. Keep up the great work!
Anonymous message
You might never know how much I treasure having merely bumped into you by pure luck and afterward getting to know you a bit. You've done an amazing amount for me. You have been a teacher, a mentor, a role model, just a genuinely good guy (which is far rarer than one would hope), and a match-maker (inadvertently). I learned Python from you, but it is not the greatest thing I learned from you.
The greatest thing I learned from you: belief is contagious. I can sometimes manage to believe in myself because you believed in me.
Some people sign their letters "All the best". I do not wish for you "all the best". Having all the best of everything would mean that you give up the desire to hunt for the next amazing thing and the curiosity to wonder what that thing might be. Rather, I hope that everything you find in this life is an upgrade to what you had before. May you always be content, but never truly satisfied.