Giving Thanks to Your Dependencies: A Platform Engineer's Gratitude Guide

This Thanksgiving, let's talk about the people you've never thanked. 60% of open source maintainers are unpaid. 60% have left or considered leaving. Your infrastructure runs on their free time.

In this episode:
- Gratitude tools: npx thanks, npm fund, cargo-thanks, thanks-stars
- Happiness Packets: Send anonymous thank-you notes to developers
- Beyond stars: Why specific use case emails matter more than generic thanks
- Company-level: Open Source Pledge ($2K/dev/year), GitHub Sponsors
- Your 5-minute Thanksgiving challenge

Perfect for platform engineers, developers, and engineering leadership who want to support the open source ecosystem.

Episode URL: https://platformengineeringplaybook.com/podcasts/00038-thanksgiving-oss-gratitude

Duration: 9:00

Host: Jordan and Alex

Category: Technology
Subcategory: Software How-To

Keywords: open source, maintainer, gratitude, Thanksgiving, npm, cargo, GitHub Sponsors, Open Source Pledge, dependencies