Open Source

33198 readers

422 users here now

All about open source! Feel free to ask questions, and share news, and interesting stuff!

Useful Links

Rules

Posts must be relevant to the open source ideology
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon from opensource.org, but we are not affiliated with them.

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

226

Should we have a day where we, as a community, go out of our way and thank our maintainers? (reddthat.com)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

45 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Was reading this article, and it got me thinking. There's lots of people who are happy to complain at length, but what if we made it a point to pick a particular day each year to express our collective gratitude for the work people do for FOSS?

Whether in the form of donations or kind words (maybe even joining a project), it might be something that helps keep people going on the things they love but for which they don't get a lot of appreciation.

Curious to hear y'all's thoughts.

Edit: Someone mentioned I Love Free Software Day, which is cool that it exists. I like the idea behind it, but I'm hesitant to piggyback upon a well-known holiday, for fear of being wholly overshadowed (Valentine's Day is already stressful enough for some people).

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] isaaclyman 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

There’s a handful of us that do 50 for FOSS: https://50forFOSS.org

tl;dr: on the first Friday of the month we each pick a FOSS (free/open-source) project and give the maintainer $50.

Thanks and encouragement is great too. As a small-time open source maintainer, it seems awareness has been spreading over the last few years and people are going out of their way to be kind and respectful when they raise issues; it really makes a difference. But financial sustainability and community ownership are separate and arguably more essential issues if we want FOSS to survive over the long term.

I did have one maintainer turn down the $50 and ask me to donate it to UNICEF. It’s all the same to me as long as it makes the work more sustainable for them.