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
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
Hey, even though it's a week late, congratulations on Bodhi 2.5.0! I keep seeing and hearing about all of the work you do in the Fedora community and open source in general. Whether you know it or not, you are a role model for so many others from all of the different "hats" you wear. You're like a superwoman of open source and it's awesome that you share what you know in your blog posts and by speaking at conferences too. We're really lucky to have people like you in open source! Thanks for all that you do, and keep up the amazing work.