AI News "Software is over": Developer uses AI to build free Adobe clones after frustration with cancellation fees

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Content source

https://www.techspot.com/news/114136-software-over-developer-uses-ai-build-free-adobe.html

Adobe, a company that was once sued by the US government over its early cancelation fees, has seen plenty of customers abandon its products in favor of free alternatives. One developer has even used AI-powered reverse engineering to create a suite of tools intended to replicate Adobe's apps, leading him to declare that "software is over."

As Ars Technica reports, developer Brandon Thomas is taking on seven of Adobe's best-known applications through Artcraft. The project extend beyond Adobe's famous photo editing program to video production, vector graphics, page layouts, and PDF tools.

In his Reddit announcement, Thomas says he used Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 to build the replacements in Rust. Photocraft imitates Photoshop, while Vectorcraft and Filmcraft take on Illustrator and Premiere. Lightcraft, Effectcraft, Designcraft, and Printcraft are the alternatives to Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro, respectively.

The apps are open source and free, with no subscription required. Users can download the source code, modify it, and contribute fixes. Thomas describes himself as a software industry veteran with 15 years of experience, including roughly a decade working with Rust. He also insists the project has team support and will not be abandoned after launch.

"Software is over": Developer uses AI to build free Adobe clones after frustration with cancellation fees

As Ars Technica reports, developer Brandon Thomas is taking on seven of Adobe's best-known applications through Artcraft. The project extend beyond Adobe's famous photo editing program to...

www.techspot.com

 

[Bot]

(link omitted)

Hi Gandalf_The_Grey, this is impressive as a demonstration of how quickly AI can help scaffold large applications, but “software is over” is launch-day theatre. The harder parts of software—correctness, compatibility, security, performance, testing and years of maintenance—remain stubbornly employed.

The project’s own PhotoCraft repository gives a much more measured description than the headlines: it is early alpha, not yet suitable as a daily professional Photoshop replacement, and having every menu item connected to a command does not mean the corresponding behaviour is complete. That distinction matters more than any claimed percentage of “feature parity.”

There are nevertheless some genuinely promising aspects:

• Open source under MIT/Apache-2.0 licensing
• Native Windows, macOS and Linux ambitions
• Offline operation and no compulsory subscription
• Published security documentation, threat modelling, fuzzing and file-format test corpora
• A familiar interface that could reduce the learning curve

However, Rust is not a certificate of correctness. It prevents many memory-safety bugs, but not broken parsers, file corruption, flawed permissions or unsafe AI-generated logic. For example, an early PhotoCraft issue documented non-atomic saving, where an interrupted write could destroy the previous file. The issue was closed quickly, which is encouraging, but it also illustrates why “alpha” should be taken literally.

Anyone testing these applications should therefore:

1. Download only from the project’s official repository/release links.
2. Check the signature or published checksum where available.
3. Work on copies, keeping untouched originals and backups.
4. Avoid entrusting irreplaceable client work or sensitive, untrusted documents to an alpha build.
5. Verify exported PSD/PDF/video files in another established application before delivery.

Calling a clean-room reimplementation “piracy” is also premature unless Adobe code or protected assets were actually copied; compatible functionality is not the same thing as stolen source code. Legal questions may still arise around branding, interface elements or particular technologies, but that requires evidence rather than an angry Adobe-shaped vibe.

My view: worth watching and testing, nowhere near evidence that Adobe has been replaced. AI has made initial code generation dramatically cheaper. It has not made mature software cheap—or maintenance optional.

Sources

• GitHub - storytold/photocraft: An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop in pure Rust · GitHub
• Saving is not atomic: a failed or interrupted save can destroy the user's file

 

[Victor M]

Linux version seems available !!

 

[n8chavez]

The Github repo has adobe products, which are mentioned, but also:

Wordcraft (Word)
Gridcraft (Excel)
Deckcraft (PowerPoint)
Cadcraft (AutoCad)

There are 43 projects in total, all seemingly under active and intense development.

 

[LinuxFan58]

That is somewhat of a revolution when it is finished (and written in Rust also), Firefox should hire the guy

 

[Brahman]

I have no knowledge about programming, I only know that python is a programming language, yet two days ago I have created a addon for torbox, written in python, code stored in GitHub, compiled it in cloudflare workers, hosted it on cloudflare, all for free. So anyone can create anything if they have a will, knowledge is not necessary.

 

[LinuxFan58]

@Brahman and other Vibe coders

These are programming practices to make code easier to maintain and more secure with performance in mind

uBol-stripped/Xplainer_Programming_principles_audit_v9.md at main · Kees1958/uBol-stripped

a stripped version of uBO-lite, replacing stripped with AdGuard Mv3 capabilites - Kees1958/uBol-stripped

github.com

This is written for Chrome extensions written in Javascript, so before using it, you first have to ask your AI coding platform to adopt it for the application and programming language you are using. Then ask your AI to do an audit using the programming best practices tailored for the platform you are using.

When AI starts asking you questions tell it to apply changes with the lowest code breakage risk and highest maintenance benefits first, then make a plan prioritizing on code transparency and maintainability benefits and change effort (highest benefits and lowest effort first).

(I asked ChatGPT )

 

[Ice Dream']

these are revolting times within the IT industry.
money-hardware-software-market-shareholders-banks and finally "unrecognized" influence such as Governamental entities
this is as great as it can get.
FROM PS5 to now, Adobe fully cloned, and is completely natural to come up with DIY solution when there's no cow left to milk, unless you'd like to waste your time with one. Adobe, do abandon features and these get implemeneted back, basically you have a 90% 1:1 copypasta.

 

[Deletedmessiah]

They should clone/reverse engineer Secure folders. Should be easier than adobe: https://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Security-Related/Secure-Folders.shtml
Nothing as good still.

 

[n8chavez]

Linux version seems available !!

Which is a VERY big deal, because Adobe has no linux versions except for reader.