I'm just an ordinary open-source developer who tinkered with a small project called pyvideotrans and somehow ended up with 12.1k Stars.

During the day, I work a regular job, and at night, I transform into a "volunteer" coder, offering a free video translation and dubbing tool for everyone to use.

Downloads are lively, but the Issue section is like a carnival of demands: "Can you add an alien language translation?" "Found a major bug!" "This bug could cost users a fortune!" "Why isn't it fixed yet? Is the project still alive?" I stare at the screen and silently complain: This is open source, how did I become a full-time customer service rep?

Donations? Don't even mention it. When the Star count was low, people would donate occasionally. Now that it's higher, I might get a measly 0.x yuan or 0.0x yuan every half month or month. I'm even worried WeChat might flag it as suspicious and freeze my account!

Among the users, there are always some "pro players" who casually comment after using it: "It's okay, a bit rough." "It'll do, not perfect though." I almost rubbed my mousepad into a pretzel—this is a free little tool, what more do you want?

But then I think, open source is the path I chose willingly. Freeloading is the "standard," so what can I do?

12.1k Stars sounds impressive, but facing a screen full of demands and messy code at 2 a.m., my mood is darker than the night outside.

When I can't keep going, I write on my public account to earn a bit of ad revenue—a few yuan a day, enough to buy a couple of Nescafé 3-in-1 instant coffees for some comfort.

Might as well crown myself the "Open-Source Grunt Hero" and have some fun with it. Being able to write some code for everyone to play around with is a small achievement in my programmer life. As for my thinning hair? No worries, I've already shaved it all off—it's shinier than the full moon on the 15th!