To sum it up — wow. It’s been a fantastic first year for Fast Forward (say that five times, fast). We’ve reached 100+ program members, and since we launched Fast Forward last year, we’ve served over 5 trillion requests for open source.

But for us, numbers like that aren’t the only way we measure our success. We also measure success by impact, because Fast Forward is designed to help open-source projects and nonprofits during their toughest moments and their biggest successes. Moments when maintainers question whether they can go on or keep up. Moments when they wonder if anyone sees and appreciates their toil or the sleepless nights they’ve given. If we can make a maintainer feel supported and celebrated during a moment like that, then we've won.

So this one is for the builders (we always are). They worked hard. They didn’t get into open source to be people managers, coaches, fundraisers, or communicators. They may not have had any goals at all except to revel in the joy of creation. They worked weekends reviewing PRs and grew gray hairs fending off DDoS attacks. They made us happy and made the entire internet better, or easier, or safer. They deserve our gratitude for everything they do, from the public repos to the invisible labor to the private sacrifice.

So here are a few thank you notes, from all of us at Fastly.

To the social web

You began 2023 in a fever dream. Social media as we knew it was crumbling around us. You were inundated. You were targeted and attacked, technically and sometimes socially. But you stepped up, buckled down, and did the work — you protected us, and you connected us all. Thank you.

To OpenTofu

When this year started you didn’t exist. You were born of necessity — responding to the community prompted your creation, but you rose to the occasion. You rolled up your sleeves, sent out the call, and put your fingers to your keyboard. You built a community overnight, and you’re just getting started. And hi, OpenBao, it’s nice to meet you. Thank you.

To Rocky Linux (and all freeloaders)

Goodness, people made Decisions™ this year. It was just a few months ago that your entire future was called into question. But you rallied the community, and adapted to the changes with grace. Thank you.

To Kubernetes

Few projects understand what it means to operate and manage an open source project at scale the way Kubernetes does — with everything that entails. Keeping internet services up is a difficult, sometimes lonely task. But that daunting task didn’t stop you from striving every day to ensure that everyone all over the world can rely on you. Thank you.

To jquery

Change, especially unexpected change, is hard. You faced that this year, making a seamless transition while handling enormous scale and importance to the web. And you made it look easy. Thank you.

This list is far from comprehensive, but it’s a start. If you’re reading this, I hope you reach out to the maintainer of an open source project you use directly and say thank you. Or, even better yet say thanks and how can I help?

What’s next for Fastly

We’ve got big things cooking in support of open source for the coming year, and I can’t wait to start rolling them out. We’ll keep helping scale and secure the open web, of course, and we’re already exploring new ways to use our platform and resources to support and celebrate maintainers. If you have an immediate need that Fastly can help with, let us know. Even if it’s not bandwidth!

In the meantime, come join our community. We’re hanging out on our forum Fastly Connect, hosting livestreams on YouTube, and attending events. Next on the calendar for us is KubeCon/ CloudNativeCon in Paris, and PyCon in Pittsburgh. Hope to see you there. :)

Now let’s go build the good internet — together ⏩