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).

  • squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    6 days ago

    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.

      • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        5 days ago

        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.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      6 days ago

      Nice idea but we shouldn’t associate open source software as “free software”. Yes it can associated to freedom and freely available but it also suggests that no one ever had 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 those 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 … and add 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. 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”