Is the software finished?
Thomas, who says he has about a decade of experience working on large-scale Rust projects, wrote on Hacker News that he was inspired to create his own open source Adobe software alternatives after being “bitten by the dark model’s ‘cancellation fees’ one time too many.” Development of the completely free options offered here under the MIT/Apache licenses will be funded, Thomas wrote, by selling token-based access to the visual AI model and the pre-existing Artcraft IDE, which is offered as an in-app image generation option alongside third-party models. This revenue stream will help ensure these apps “won’t be an orphan project of a small team,” Thomas wrote. “We have popular team building software for filmmakers, so its support is fully funded.”
Filmcraft closely mimics the look and feel of Adobe Premiere.
Filmcraft closely mimics the look and feel of Adobe Premiere.
Credit: ArtCraft
Thomas is the latest in a long line of coders using AI tools to accelerate the long-standing but laborious practice of reverse engineering (that is, replicating the functionality of software without directly copying the code itself). Although this practice has generally been deemed legally acceptable, ArtCraft applications could still face legal problems if their “trade dress” too closely mimics Adobe’s familiar look and interface.
After coding exclusively with AI tools since February, Thomas said he foresees a near future where everyday developers can recreate open source versions of popular paid software to “take back the internet and own technology forever.”
“Now you can simply create 1:1, cleanroom, high-performance, cross-platform functional equivalents. There’s no stopping you,” Thomas wrote. “We will replace Google search, we will build our own smartphones, we will build better infrastructure. We will remove all ads and de-sensitise the entire technological world.”
“The software is finished,” he rejoiced in a previous comment, claiming to have “a unique Photoshop. The whole thing.”
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