3d ago

Should we have a day where we, as a community, go out of our way and thank our maintainers?

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).

45 comments

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.

Make it February 22 and call it F022 Appreciation.
- Or May 5, F055
  
  I love it, but that's also sort of a Star Wars day. After "May the 4th be with you." It's "Revenge of the 5th." It may be a little easier to get attention and mind share if it's a day that doesn't already have something like that going on.
- Let's do it
- I like the way you think.
- Fozz? As in Fozzie Bear? Yeah, I could appreciate him, I guess. Wocka wocka!

February 14th was I Love Free Software Day
We often underestimate the power of a simple "Thank you". Free Software contributors do important work for our society and they deserve to be recognised. “I Love Free Software Day”, celebrated on 14 February, is the perfect opportunity for you to express your special gratitude and show your appreciation for Free Software.
- Sounds kinda inconvenient to put it on Valentine's Day as everyone will be preoccupied for obvious reasons...
  
  Let's be real, the venn diagram of the open source community and people with plans on Valentine's Day does not overlap as much as we'd like.
- Nice idea but we shouldn’t associate open source software as “free software”. Yes it can be associated to freedom and freely available but it also suggests that no one ever has to pay for it.
  This software even though it is freely available is not free of monetary cost. Someone has to pay for it either with their own money, their expertise or their time … all of which cost people money.
  It becomes a whole different level of cost when it comes to open source social media. You need people to run the software, maintain the software, update the software, secure the software … then throw in servers, routing, security .. and as instances grow in size you need more hardware, hardware upgrades, updates and people and organizations to maintain it all … at one point in the growth of open source social media, you start to need dedicated full time people to work at maintaining these things.
  I’ve chatted with some instance owners and maintainers who say they don’t mind the work because it is limited at this time. Many of them are already professionals with well paying jobs and they don't mind doing this on the side as a hobby or passion project. However the work is light at this time because there aren’t that many users and the communities are small. But over the past year I’ve noticed more and more instances changing and growing to accommodate a growing user base … it all ends up costing money.
  So it isn’t totally “free”
  A better and healthier way to see it is to call it “Open source” and remind every one that a critical thing that we should all understand in this new age of open source software is that crowd funding, sponsorship, contributions, donations should all be normalized by everyone who uses this software. And it doesn’t cost that much either. If every open source user just spent a dollar once in a while to the project or software that they used the most or liked the most, then it would add up to thousands of dollars for the developer. The same goes to instance owners and maintainers - we need to properly and regularly fund these guys to keep them all stable and working.
  Personally I've been contributing for years to projects like Wikipedia, LibreOffice and GIMP ... and over the past year or two I'm a small time regular contributor to the instance I use at Lemmy.ca
  The danger with just calling it ‘free’ is in making everyone believe that no one has to pay for these services. The danger to not properly funding these projects is that eventually the costs have to be taken up by someone and that is usually the developers themselves or the maintainers or managers. And as popularity and user numbers grow, the costs only add up.
  The problem comes when developers and managers have to figure out how to get more money to keep their project alive which is where corporate creep and advertising options start appearing. And also, as one platform becomes popular and becomes too expensive to maintain then it starts showing monetary value for corporations to take over. Corporate rot starts setting in when these projects are not properly funded and kept alive and developers or owners have to make the choice between being underfunded by their userbase ... or making a bunch of money by selling out to a company or corporation.
  We have to start normalizing funding, sponsorship, contributions and donations because that will protect our communities from being swallowed up by corporate interests in the future. If we don’t fund or pay for these things … some millionaire or billionaire will eventually come along to use their wealth at the cost of ownership and control and eventually lock up everything again behind a wall and a gate.
  
  The title is from FSFE. You clearly contribute to FOSS, which is fantastic, and while I and many others agree with you, someone who posted a comment about FSFE probably doesn't need a novel on post-Stallman terminology...
  
  Free as in freedom, not free as in beer.

With money? Yeah. Otherwise, don't bother.
- While I understand the sentiment, I have run across developers that explicitly state they don't want money as thanks. They want encouragement or volunteers, instead.
  Also, if that's how we approached it, the poor among us would be excluded, and that's far from my goal with this idea.
  
  I haven't put out any FOSS yet because I'm still writing a lot of "wtf is this" code but once I can I really want to try to hold myself to the idea of "I do this in my free time, so I provide it for free"
  
  You don't think money is encouraging? You can also hire people with that money, instead of volunteeras. Idk what devs you've been listening to, but I haven't hear anyone who actively refuses donations or tips for their project.
  My point is, if you appreciate someone, put your money where your words are. Anyone can get "encouragement" for free.
  Volunteering is good too, I guess, but in general I don't think people should work for free. At all.

I like that

Might be nice to have a foundation that would seek out key open source maintainers and direct funds to them, without them needing to self promote. The nebraska initiative?
- Doesn't a country in the EU have one? I can't recall which one or what the fund is called, but I see mention of projects that get awarded grants every now and again.
  
  NLnet. However they only fund specific types of projects, and there are many open source maintainers who are not interested in money (usually they have a well-paid job already).
  
  there's nlnet.nl, but I think you have to apply for a grant.

Would be a good annual reminder that all of this has taken hard work, and a good opportunity to raise funds. I'd totally go through all my favourite projects to write a thank you somewhere
- Knowing you're appreciated with no strings attached would be a good self-esteem booster.
- and a good opportunity to raise funds.
  This is what really matters I think, people should become more and more aware that yes Free software is great (I'm maintaining several open source projects myself). But all these contributors, including myself, are not or almost not funded, while many users /devs/server admins might use and depend upon your software.
  If only 5% of the people who use the software in anyway would donate or sponsor these open source and free software projects, that would already be a huge win! Just know that a lot of developers are getting burned out.

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I'll repeat my comment here to give it it's own thread
=====
Nice idea but we shouldn’t associate open source software as “free software”. Yes it can be associated to freedom and freely available but it also suggests that no one ever has to pay for it.
This software even though it is freely available is not free of monetary cost. Someone has to pay for it either with their own money, their expertise or their time … all of which cost people money.
It becomes a whole different level of cost when it comes to open source social media. You need people to run the software, maintain the software, update the software, secure the software … then throw in servers, routing, security .. and as instances grow in size you need more hardware, hardware upgrades, updates and people and organizations to maintain it all … at one point in the growth of open source social media, you start to need dedicated full time people to work at maintaining these things.
I’ve chatted with some instance owners and maintainers who say they don’t mind the work because it is limited at this time. Many of them are already professionals with well paying jobs and they don't mind doing this on the side as a hobby or passion project. However the work is light at this time because there aren’t that many users and the communities are small. But over the past year I’ve noticed more and more instances changing and growing to accommodate a growing user base … it all ends up costing money.
So it isn’t totally “free”
A better and healthier way to see it is to call it “Open source” and remind every one that a critical thing that we should all understand in this new age of open source software is that crowd funding, sponsorship, contributions, donations should all be normalized by everyone who uses this software. And it doesn’t cost that much either. If every open source user just spent a dollar once in a while to the project or software that they used the most or liked the most, then it would add up to thousands of dollars for the developer. The same goes to instance owners and maintainers - we need to properly and regularly fund these guys to keep them all stable and working.
Personally I've been contributing for years to projects like Wikipedia, LibreOffice and GIMP ... and over the past year or two I'm a small time regular contributor to the instance I use at Lemmy.ca
The danger with just calling it ‘free’ is in making everyone believe that no one has to pay for these services. The danger to not properly funding these projects is that eventually the costs have to be taken up by someone and that is usually the developers themselves or the maintainers or managers. And as popularity and user numbers grow, the costs only add up.
The problem comes when developers and managers have to figure out how to get more money to keep their project alive which is where corporate creep and advertising options start appearing. And also, as one platform becomes popular and becomes too expensive to maintain then it starts showing monetary value for corporations to take over. Corporate rot starts setting in when these projects are not properly funded and kept alive and developers or owners have to make the choice between being underfunded by their userbase ... or making a bunch of money by selling out to a company or corporation.
We have to start normalizing funding, sponsorship, contributions and donations because that will protect our communities from being swallowed up by corporate interests in the future. If we don’t fund or pay for these things … some millionaire or billionaire will eventually come along to use their wealth at the cost of ownership and control and eventually lock up everything again behind a wall and a gate.
- Well spoken. Free is more of a freedom to read, write, and use. Not free of cost. It's amazing that a lot is free of cost but I highly recommend donating to those services you use regularly. Only if you can of course. I know money is tight for many people including myself.
  
  Same here, I have a hard time budgeting most months but I do go out of my way to donate $20-$30-$40 a year to major projects or to sign on to $1-$2 a month contributions.
  I think of it from the point of view that I won't buy that hamburger this week and instead give the money to a developer instead.

Where is the preferred way to express gratitude through kind word and financial support.
For example, lemmy developers can be help through Patreon, but what % of the donations stays with Patreon?
- You can find the details of Patreon's fees on their help page covering that topic.
  https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/11111747095181-Creator-fees-overview
  It's not a flat rate, but it's anywhere between 5-12%, depending on how you choose to use their platform.
  ETA: lots of devs have a Kofi link or similar, and some will indicate what kind of support they prefer. But my idea is more about getting people to be mindful that FOSS isn't free of cost and to encourage the people that keep communities like this one going!

We should make it April 30th, because that way if no one receives their propers, then the developers can go on the strike the day after.

A global FOSS day would be awesome. In addition to giving gifts to the authors and maintainers (and maybe Paterson and others would agree to no fees for one-time donations on that day or something), think of all the other new holiday traditions we could start…
cookies in the shape of Linus or RMS
decorations made from “that box” we all have of extra parts and cables
rhyming flame wars on every listserv
riveting games of (token) ring-around-the-rosie
What else?

You mean my cosmetic surgeon? I pay on time and go back. What more were you thinking of?
Seriously though, yes. The best thanks is to help them keep the lights on every month.
Here in the UK we were pointlessly getting the clap every Thursday on our doorsteps for the NHS. I may have misunderstood.
- Uh... At least in the US "getting the clap" means chlamydia.
  
  Same same.

Really need an annual fundraiser type day where everyone is reminded to donate to their software maintainer and server host etc
Without donatioms fedi can't scale imho
But if everybody pitched 10 bucks per year, I bet that could take us into big boys club
- Only about 15-20 of us support my instance, so if everyone gave $5 USD annually, I bet every instance would be covered.

What about software freedom day?

45 comments