Created by Matt Mullenweg in 2009, when the plugin directory hosted only 4K plugins, Thank a Plugin Author Day (January 28th) motivates users to thank plugin authors.
There are several ways to celebrate the event, such as visiting the plugin author’s website. The link is usually available via the plugin’s page on WordPress.org. You can also find a link to the author’s website by searching for the plugin in the backend of WordPress. Also, most plugins in the directory have a link to give a monetary donation.

Another way to thank plugin authors is to rate and review their plugins. Ratings and reviews are an easy way to send feedback directly to an author. Make sure to provide actionable feedback instead of one or two-word reviews. A side effect of rating and reviewing plugins, is that it’s one of many ways to contribute back to the WordPress project.

Since the holiday’s creation, over 31K plugins have been added to the directory which results in nearly 36K reasons to use WordPress! Thank you to anyone who has ever published a WordPress plugin whether it’s on the official directory or on GitHub. Without so many plugins, I wouldn’t be able to customize WordPress to make it my own.
Well, this was the reason of your tweet. Love the ways you mentioned to pay gratitude to the plugin authors. And yes, you are absolutely right. Without these awesome plugins, I wouldn’t be able to customize WordPress to make it my own.
Thank you all who published the plugins to WordPress.org either free or premium!