

An experiment in gratitude - psadri

I don’t know about you but most of my software projects would have been impossible without heavy reliance on open source software.<p>Over the years, every time I npm&#x2F;brew&#x2F;cpan installed a package, I also wished I could somehow thank its author&#x2F;s.  The had just saved me days&#x2F;weeks&#x2F;months of work.  Of course, I never got around to it.<p>With the launch of my last project, I decided it was time for change.<p>I tracked down the authors of the packages that were critical to the project, sent them a nice thank you email and snail mailed them a box of craft chocolate as a token of my gratitude and appreciation.<p>The response has been so great that I am inspired to carry on.<p>So, I plan to send a box of chocolate to ~100 open source authors over the next year.  Roughly 2 authors &#x2F; week.<p>I want a low key, yet tangible gift so I have chosen a “year of chocolate” boxes from Askinosie Chocolate [http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bit.ly&#x2F;1HpQGrH].  Chocolate is informal and easy to share with others.  The folks at Askinosie are awesome in their own unique way. They share their profits back with the cocoa farmers and I figured their award winning craft chocolate would be a hit with most people.<p>I am aiming for lone&#x2F;small team authors (eg petka &#x2F; bluebirdjs) vs the more established projects that are already well recognized (eg react, backbone,… as awesome as they are).<p>Has there been a library that was critical to your project and you’d like to thank its author(s)?  Feel free to suggest ideas.  I will post my progress on HN every few weeks.
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egor83
Flattr and Gratipay work on this: repeatedly show support/gratitude to people
(Gratipay is mostly oriented on software, Flattr is more broad).

[https://flattr.com](https://flattr.com)

[https://gratipay.com](https://gratipay.com)

Then there's Patreon, but I don't immediately see any software-related stuff
there, mostly other creative things (videos/music/drawings etc).

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EDIT: a few examples from Flattr:

NoScript:
[https://flattr.com/thing/42724/NoScript](https://flattr.com/thing/42724/NoScript)

Open Street Map:
[https://flattr.com/profile/openstreetmap](https://flattr.com/profile/openstreetmap)

EFF: [https://flattr.com/profile/EFF](https://flattr.com/profile/EFF)

AdBlock: [https://flattr.com/thing/118424/AdBlock-For-
Chrome](https://flattr.com/thing/118424/AdBlock-For-Chrome)

WikiLeaks:
[https://flattr.com/profile/WikiLeaks](https://flattr.com/profile/WikiLeaks)

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psadri
Thanks for the suggestions. I started contributing to gratipay recently.

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bbcbasic
I think the companies that profit on the back of all the OSS should give back
too. They should donate respectable cash amounts for projects that are not
already bankrolled and rely on people working in their spare time. Of course
most companies wont. But it only takes a few to make a difference.

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alexissantos
The fine folks at Eldarion have saved me a lot of time with eldarion-ajax:
[https://github.com/eldarion/eldarion-
ajax](https://github.com/eldarion/eldarion-ajax)

Just use a few data attributes and you've got AJAX support in your web app.

Update: Not to mention all their work with the Pinax suite of Django packages:
[https://github.com/pinax/](https://github.com/pinax/)

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psadri
Thanks for the suggestion. I will try to track the authors down and contact
them.

