In a heartfelt post titled ‘For 2025, Thank you everyone,’ FelicianoTech expresses gratitude to the Discourse community — developers, forum contributors, and self-hosted users — for their collective impact, especially amid recent layoffs announced in a company blog post. Despite the tough news, FelicianoTech highlights the dignity shown by departing employees in the comments and praises Discourse’s polished, open-source nature — comparing it to WordPress at its peak. Special thanks go to @tobiaseigen and @RGJ. philh echoes the sentiment, applauding the ecosystem Discourse has become and honoring @codinghorror, @eviltrout, @sam, and @HAWK for their vision and financial stewardship. Canapin adds that Discourse’s ethical culture — rare and commendable — stands out from past work experiences. HAWK, responding to the praise, calls the messages a needed comfort on a difficult Monday, acknowledging the painful reality of letting go of talented team members — ‘no bad people to get rid of’ — while reaffirming commitment to the mission. The thread underscores deep appreciation for Discourse not just as software, but as a values-driven community and ecosystem.
I meant to do this for #SourceCodeSunday but I ended up getting sick over the weekend. Better late than never.
I wanted to thank everyone involved in the Discourse community for being here; for the devs on GitHub triaging, reproducing, and fixing bugs, for those providing support on this forum, and especially to those keeping the Discourse self-hosted option relevant. Whether we’re cheap, low on funds (), or simply allergic to additional subscription fees, self-hosted Discourse makes a big impact on the world, even if it might otherwise lower the company’s bottom line.
Speaking of which, I just came across the recent news. It’s unfortunate hear about layoffs and with the current (U.S.) economy, I get it. While I have a thought I won’t post here, here’s what I will say. If you read the comments for that blog post, some are by employees let go. They have nothing but positive to things to say about Discourse, still. That’s not easy to do, props to Discourse for that.
Discourse (the software) operates at a level I once considered WordPress to be at. Open-source, powerful, yet very polished and intuitive. Thank you to everyone this year but keep making it all happen.
In particular I’d like to thank @tobiaseigen for the herding and @RGJ for recent help.
Since you are posting I will assume you are feeling well again! Good to hear it.
Thanks @FelicianoTech for posting this. I imagine many others have similar thoughts but don’t take the time for posting thanks and praise.
I for one concur with everything you wrote. I expect there are many that also concur and feel very appreciative of all that is “Discourse” which, as you allude to, is much more than just the software. Discourse has really grown into the ecosystem my fellow early adopters had hoped for.
Special thanks to @codinghorror@eviltrout and @sam for the vision and tenacity to make Discourse happen, all those involved along the way and of course @HAWK (and @sam) for doing the very tough job of making the beans work for solvency and long term financial well being.
Having been on both sides of Discourse, the thing that struck me the most is the company’s ethic (towards employees, customers and users), which I must say was the complete opposite of all my previous work experience, and something that definitely deserves special mention.
This is exactly what I needed on this sad Monday morning. Thank you all.
It was a brutally hard decision that no one wanted to make – as @supermathie puts it so well, the downside of hiring great people is that you have no bad people to get rid of. Now we’re committed to moving forward with the mission so it wasn’t all in vain, but we’ll miss them terribly.
), or simply allergic to additional subscription fees, self-hosted Discourse makes a big impact on the world, even if it might otherwise lower the company’s bottom line.