Thanks

Thank the open source maintainers you depend on! 🙌✨

5 followers

Visit website
"Put your money where your love is." – The Grateful Dead Open source maintainers do the work that makes our awesome apps, websites, and projects possible! Many authors devote countless hours to open source. Let's help out authors and make the software we rely on healthier at the same time!
Thanks gallery image
Launch tags:Open Source•Developer Tools
Launch Team
Intercom
Intercom
Startups get 90% off Intercom + 1 year of Fin AI Agent free
Promoted

What do you think? …

Feross Aboukhadijeh
Socket for Python
Maker
Hey everyone! 🙌 I just released a neat little tool you can use with npm (the package manager for Node.js). It's called `thanks` and it helps you donate to the open source maintainers you depend on! ✨ Here's how to use it: 1. Run `npx thanks` in your Node.js project 2. See which of your dependencies are seeking donations! 💸 🌟 If you're an open source author, add yourself to the list so people will know you're seeking donations for your open source work: https://github.com/feross/thanks I'm really excited by the opportunity to solve the crisis of "open source sustainability". If you haven't heard here's the tldr: "Our modern society—everything from hospitals to stock markets to newspapers to social media—runs on software. But take a closer look, and you’ll find that the tools we use to build software are buckling under demand." – Nadia Eghbal (from https://www.fordfoundation.org/m...) Lots of the open source that we use to build the awesome products that we share on Product Hunt every day are in dire need of help. We need more people to maintain code and triage issues. But also more funding so we can justify spending more time on open source instead of working for clients/working at traditional jobs. I know maintainers who even need funding to feed/shelter themselves (this is not an exaggeration). We have a lot more work to do. `thanks` is just one attempt to help, but it's only the beginning. For now, take a look and see if any of the software you depend has authors who are seeking donations to continue their work. Happy hacking!
Ves
Wellfound
@feross I love the idea!
Kristian Freeman
Bytesized
@feross This is awesome <3
Feross Aboukhadijeh
Socket for Python
Maker
@vesln @imkmf Thanks – means a lot to hear that!
Barnaby Keene
@feross Awesome idea! I'm not a JS person so I you inspired me to build a Golang equivalent! https://github.com/Southclaws/th... :)
Feross Aboukhadijeh
Socket for Python
Maker
@southclaws Nice work! You should tweet this out! I'll reshare it :)
Jeremy Bauer
This is wonderful. What a nice thing 💖
Feross Aboukhadijeh
Socket for Python
Maker
@barnabybones Thanks Jeremy. Support OSS ❤️
Chris Frantz
Loops
Way to go @feross! This awesome. Integrating something like the BAT tokens similar to what Brave did to automate payments every time thanks is run might be an interesting option to enable. Supporting open source development is a problem that definitely needs solving.
Feross Aboukhadijeh
Socket for Python
Maker
@frantzlight I punted on solving a lot of hard problems like handling payments, deciding how much to allocate to each maintainer, etc. The tool is deliberately simple -- it just tells you that a maintainer is asking for donations and directs you to their donation pages where you can read more and decide how much to donate. I think it's a simple first step. It raises awareness that you may have dependencies looking for donations, but doesn't prescribe how much to donate or whether to donate at all. I've seen other efforts that tried to do too much and never got off the ground because of all the uncertainty. I valued shipping a V1 product more than it "solving all the problems". ❤️
Chris Frantz
Loops
@feross I don't blame you! I've worked on similar problems and eliminating steps for the user to accomplish in order to contribute is always the hardest part. This definitely raised awareness though and I hope there's a V2. 🙂
Ash Menon
Jigsaurus
Oh wow I love this!
Feross Aboukhadijeh
Socket for Python
Maker
John Langford
This is great! Thank you
Feross Aboukhadijeh
Socket for Python
Maker
Cody P
Edji

So wholesome, so awesome, and as a dev relying on open source packages, extremely useful and eye-opening— I discovered multiple devs that I use 100s of packages from!

Pros:

Well implemented, super straightforward, and eye-opening

Cons:

None!

Feross Aboukhadijeh
Socket for Python
Maker
This makes me happy to hear. ✨ It is indeed quite eye-opening the first time you run the tool! Many people have had exactly the same reaction as you – shock at just how much they depend on the work of specific individuals (or teams) in the community. 💪
Steven J. Selcuk
That's really good!
Feross Aboukhadijeh
Socket for Python
Maker
12
Next
Last