What are Open-Source Happiness Packets?
People are generally much more loved than they think they are. Especially when things don't go according to plan, other people almost never think as harshly of you as you might think of yourself. It's easy for us to complain when bad things happen, and yet 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.
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 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. We hope to build an archive of open-source happiness that communities can draw inspiration from.
As an example, here are two random messages from our archive:
Anonymous message
This is such a simple idea but something that's truly magical and special. For me, Happiness Packets is the secret to happiness. Some days are great, some days are not so great. Some days, we're a little sad and we don't know why. Whenever I feel that way, I come to Happiness Packets to think of nice things to say to people who help me happy. I send a few of them and every time, I'm always wearing a smile by the time I'm done.
Thank you for your time and energy to create such an amazing service. I hope Happiness Packets inspires other people to build tools or services that inspire people to always be excellent to each other and to spend time focusing on the positive things to say instead of the negative.
Anonymous message
❤️