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
One of the amazing parts of open source communities are the stories everyone brings. Today, I had an opportunity to learn more about your story and hear about what brought you into Opensource.com.
You're an inspiring person and an incredible role model. I wish others could learn from your patience, wisdom, and love that you willingly share with so many. Your positivity is viral and like someone else said, it's hard to imagine OSDC without your energy and enthusiasm. Even when we tease you about your enthusiasm or your so-called "laziness", I personally believe it's because you help create the image of the OSDC community that many of us know it for… we appreciate everything you bring to the community.
Thanks for everything you do, not just for Opensource.com itself but the people behind it too. It's people like you that make me truly happy to be involved with open source.
Anonymous message
Thank you for your attention to detail, willingness and enthusiasm to contribute and patience to wade through the existing documentation in Cyrus, finding the pain points... and fixing them.
Finding people to contribute code to a project is a lot easier than finding people who will update documentation. Especially to a 24 year old project like Cyrus.
May the weather always be to your liking, may your noodles never splatter across your shirt, may your virtual pen never run out of ink and may your timezone calculations never give you a headache.