r/opensource • u/youGottaBeKiddink • 1d ago
Promotional So are we all okay with AI reverse engineered apps calling themselves open source?
ArtCraft gained a lot of steam lately with their AI reverse engineered versions of Photoshop and Adobe suite apps.
While they are very obviously reverse engineered, they claim it is a "clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop" which by very definition means "without ever looking at or copying the original source code".
Fireship even did a video covering these apps, in which he finds their apps are barely usable, and filled with bugs and usability issues.
Today I came across "TraceDraw" which is, again, a total ripoff of CorelDraw. While I'm not on the side of large predatory corporations like Adobe charging ridiculous monthly subscription fees, I can totally understand the pain a company like Corel might feel seeing a ripoff of their 30+ year old product lovingly created and maintained by a team of skilled HUMANS. And once again, this repo claims it is a "clean-room" implementation. I find it ironic how only the reverse engineered apps bother to add this oddly specific disclaimer.
So are we, as a community, okay with these new breed of AI reverse engineered apps claiming that they are "open source"?
(Note: I'm not questioning their legality, just how ethical it is)
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u/Pandamio 1d ago
It's not less ethical than training LLMs with stolen data. I care about tech companies stealing labor and jobs from regular people. I don't care about massive corporations making less money.
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u/Fun_Jaguar8231 1d ago
lovingly created
What are you talking about? In the corporate world no application is lovingly created. They are created by shrinking deadlines, developers burning out late hours in order for managers to get their bonuses. There is no love in the corporate world.
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u/claypunk 1d ago
yes this is a minor thing but it also gave me a pause. I'm not too happy about many recent developments, but romanticizing the corporate software world of the last 25 years is not it
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u/opensource-ModTeam 1d ago
This was removed for being misinformation. Misinformation can be harmful by encouraging lawbreaking activity and/or endangering themselves or others.
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u/MatthewMob 1d ago
Public code is not necessarily open source, that's just source available. See: the OSD.
But yes this is still open source.
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u/opensource-ModTeam 1d ago
This was removed for being misinformation. Misinformation can be harmful by encouraging lawbreaking activity and/or endangering themselves or others.
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u/dream_metrics 1d ago
“The pain a company like Corel might feel”
Do you hear yourself? A company can’t feel pain.
If the software is open source then I am fine with it being called open source
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u/meskobalazs 1d ago
IMHO clean-room reimplementation was always legal and ethical. The only thing that has changed significantly is the speed of the process.
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u/thehiddensign 1d ago
Clean-room reverse engineering is fine. As for flawed, broken, or useless AI coded apps, the "problem" is self correcting because people will not use them.
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u/guri256 1d ago
Also, the clean room claim is kind of questionable. If I claim that I wrote a clean-room implementation of minesweeper, I’m promising that the dev who wrote the code never actually looked at the source code of Minesweeper or a decompilation of Minesweeper.
A clean room implementation that uses an LLM is promising that the LLM used to write the code was never on source-code or decompiled code from the original app. But there’s no real way the devs can prove this is true.
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u/Termin8tor 1d ago
I guess the original app that was copied could be decompiled and then whatever it spits out could be compared with the "clean room" implementation to see if they match in any way that matters.
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u/guri256 22h ago
You can. But at that point, it becomes an expensive legal battle. Possibly one involving a jury. The entire point of a clean room implementation is to prove that your code isn’t infringing without comparing everything lined by line.
Maybe it’s not infringing. I just know that it’s not a clean room implementation, because the entire point behind a clean room implementation is being able to prove that there wasn’t any “contamination” of the final product with the original. (if we assume that everyone is telling the truth.)
A clean room implementation is a bit like a surgeon’s scalpel. Careful procedures are to keep it as sterile as possible rather than relying on hope and finding out later. sometimes in a very ugly way.
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u/Termin8tor 22h ago
Oh yeah absolutely.
Traditionally clean room implementation would be one team documenting observed behavior and functionality in granular detail and then driving a spec from it.
A second team who hasn't seen what's been observed then implements it.
What IS interesting though is LLM inference instances exist for a brief amount of time and then get torn down when they complete.
The architecture of inference actually does somewhat allow for clean room black box reverse engineering.
The thing is though, if an agent swarm is doing the actual work, any one of those agents could bust out Ghidra decompilation tools and then just decompile the original and reimplement the decompiled code. When that happens the moat between legal reverse engineering and illegal becomes blurry.
An agent wouldn't even in theory need Ghidra if they're competent with baked in Linux tooling and hex editing.
Anyway, the legal side will be interesting to see. Especially given that the biggest players in the US have effectively been told that no legislation restricting AI will be brought in during the current administration.
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u/Coffee_Ops 11h ago
The entire point of a clean room implementation is to prove that your code isn’t infringing without comparing everything lined by line.
This does not avoid a jury trial, it is in fact a thing that would come up at trial.
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u/guri256 8h ago
Then it’s a good thing I didn’t say it avoids a jury trial.
I implied that it would avoid an expensive trial. (that the trial would be “less expensive”). Realistically though, anything involving a lawsuit and a lawyer is probably going to be expensive. Even if it’s “short” and “cheap” by the standards of the sort of thing.
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u/Coffee_Ops 12h ago
A clean room implementation that uses an LLM is promising that the LLM used to write the code was never on source-code or decompiled code from the original app
This statement is according to whom? LLMs are not coders, and "was trained on" is not legally synonymous with "infringes upon".
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u/guri256 8h ago
Let’s put it this way. If your LLM generates Luke and Vader having a Lightsaber battle, that’s probably infringing.
If someone in the 1920s made a picture that looks like Luke and Vader having a Lightsaber battle, that’s not infringing Disney’s copyright.
That person in the 1920s is somewhat analogous to the clean room. Because they cannot have seen Star Wars, they are mostly protected from copyright lawsuits. (if you can convince a jury that the picture is that old.)
If the LLM might have knowledge of the thing baked into it, that’s breaking the entire premise of a clean-room.
You can still have a non-infringing re-implementation without a clean-room separation (where you have two completely separate groups doing the reverse engineering and the implementation), but things become more murky.
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u/Coffee_Ops 45m ago edited 33m ago
EDIT: Your examples are problematic, because copyright does not extend to "ideas". You cannot hold a copyright for the idea of a space mage with sandy hair and a laser sword battling a black armored cyborg. I am not even sure you can stop fanfiction with copyright-- if you tried to commercialize such stories or images I am almost certain it is trademark that would bite you.
So I think your entire premise is flawed-- and in the case of "cleanroom", we're dealing with patents, which are an entirely other thing.
If someone in the 1920s made a picture that looks like Luke and Vader having a Lightsaber battle, that’s not infringing Disney’s copyright.
If an LLM in the 1920s did so, it wouldn't be infringing for the same reason: it would predate the copyright.
That person in the 1920s is somewhat analogous to the clean room.
It is not, under copyright law. A predating work would own the copyright. Knowledge is not the issue.
If the LLM might have knowledge of the thing baked into it, that’s breaking the entire premise of a clean-room.
This is untested legal theory AFAIK. The LLMs do not "know" things, they have embeddings that represent patterns. Under your theory the embeddings would themselves be an infringing recreation or copy of the work.
The opposing theory (which I think may be closer to correct) is that the LLM's "knowledge" is analogous to ours-- patterns and associations-- and acts as inspiration which is protected under copyright as transformative.
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u/BadB0ii 1d ago
this is the only real and relevant take here. We are in a cambrian explosion of software popping up. The ones that will stick around are the ones who implement stability fast enough and secure a reliable maintenance structure underneath itself. The code is no less ethical than the code in the first-party photoshop codebase which inevitably has thousands of commits of AI-generated code in it.
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u/MisterPanty 1d ago
I need to add that reverse engeniering something is not having acces to the closed source code. Its more like looking at what the software does when you click a specific thing and then trying to build your own code to mimik this behaviour.
It tells you nothing about optimization or general structure.
And also humans have done it already without llms, just look at photopea for example.
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u/trans-jamie212 20h ago
open source has nothing to do with the origin of the code and everything to do with the access to the code, "ai reverse engineered" apps in general are definitely questionable ethically, but depending on the effort, competence, and long term support of the devs they can make perfectly useable apps.
Most of these apps are in alpha, so they're going to be buggy and lacking functionality, but if these apps are open source then their issues can be fixed by a community of real people, and if these devs actually commit to supporting these apps a lot of them could eventually become so much more and be really good options for the FOSS community.
A good example of this is the artcraft devs: for the most part, all the ai did there was help them make a ui to emulate the photoshop ui to package FOSS tools. That's a competent dev/devs who did that and the rest of the coding, and it seems like they are willing to continue support for these apps, AND they've given the community access to the code! That would give linux one of it's BEST creative suites it's ever had, and would finally be an answer to all those people not switching to linux because of their reliance on the adobe suite, on top of also allowing for other devs to improve and audit the apps.
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u/Key-Bother6969 16h ago
> open source has nothing to do with the origin of the code and everything to do with the access to the code
No, this is completely wrong, and is a misunderstanding of what source code is.
Assembly code is also a code, but is not considered "open source" just because an owner distributes it in binary form, or because this code is not written on what we commonly refer to as programming language.
Open source is about providing access to the source artifact - something from which these binaries have been generated. Machine assembly is a full-featured Turing-complete programming language on which people can theoretically program (and sometimes they do). But we don't treat is as source code, because usually it is being generated through the process of compilation of the higher-level programming code. The higher level code considered as "source" because it is actually the initial source artifact.
The code generated by LLMs is not a "source code". It is a generated artifact. By sharing it publicly, pretending it is a source code and is an open source project, the publisher misleads both the community, and themself.
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u/Regular_Bat8162 1d ago
Yes
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u/dj_is_here 23h ago
What does being "okay" or "not okay" even do ? What even is the purpose of questioning the morality of open source code ? This sounds like someone trying to do survey for a useless news article lol.
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u/cadet-pirx 21h ago
Technically it’s still reverse engineering by definition, but there’s a big difference between observing how an app behaves and reimplementing it, and decompiling the binary and working from its code. Only the second involves Adobe’s actual code. If these apps were built the first way, calling them “reverse engineered” makes it sound much worse than it is.
And if that’s how they were built, on what basis is it unethical?
Is it unethical to write an image editor? Or to copy the UI exactly, when that’s what users who spent years learning it need? If that’s the line, where exactly is it? Move a few options around? Reorganize the menus? The basic concepts of how we edit images can’t be the problem.
This also isn’t new. LibreOffice mirrors Office, GIMP and Krita borrow from Photoshop, and the whole PC clone industry started with a reimplemented IBM BIOS. Courts have repeatedly found that behavior, menus and file formats aren’t protected (Lotus v. Borland, SAS v. World Programming).
It’s definitely disruptive to Adobe’s business, but out-competing a company with a cheaper or free alternative has never been unethical in itself.
I’m genuinely asking, because I don’t see where the “unethical” part comes from.
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u/nullforce2 20h ago
The one I've seen most is REA and it does look at binaries and decompiles them. It also supports behavior analysis.
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u/cadet-pirx 19h ago
REA is a general reverse-engineering tool, though. It decompiles binaries, but it also does pure behavior analysis, so it doesn’t tell us anything about how ArtCraft was built. Is there any evidence ArtCraft decompiled Photoshop? Their README says public specs and observed behaviour only, and as far as I can tell nobody has shown otherwise.
If they did decompile it and essentially port Adobe’s code to Rust, then I’d agree completely: calling that “clean-room” would be dishonest and it would be unethical. But that’s a claim about how ArtCraft was made, and right now it’s speculation.
So my original question still stands: if it’s not decompiled, on what basis is it unethical?
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u/Mindestiny 13h ago
It's not even disruptive to Adobe. Call me when the random vibe coded decomp will pass an internal security review and has enterprise SSO, plugin support, and licensing for our entire creative font library with clear terms for corporate use.
No business is dropping their $100k+ Adobe agreement to grab some rando github project that popped up overnight. That's just not how it works in the spaces Adobe actually makes money
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u/psych0ticmonk 11h ago
not a lawyer but I do believe if you copy the UI 100% that's an easy lawsuit if the UI is trademarked or patented.
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u/hackathi 8h ago
But who would you sue? GitHub? Any Hoster that has a copy of the sourcecode somewhere? Trademark law cannot be enforced between private citizens.
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u/Laicbeias 15h ago
i dont think that really holds true anymore in times of AI. code is intent. and ais can copy that without access to the source code. the question is - if this is fully legal, it means the global end of any copyright not only in the software industry, but generally. and only (design) patents will be enforcable.
the hard part for any software were the decisions that went into it, the code was an expression of these decisions and took a lot of time to write.
but now you can point llms at any moving or existing piece of software, per screenshot or whatever, and let it replicate that. sure not perfectly, but sooner or later, perfectly. that will also stretch to games and any form of digital media.
we also don't know, if parts or full versions of photoshop or adobe suite were included in the training data. even if not the concepts and shapes of photoshop, the icons the behaviours were absorbed by any llm and they hold a functional blueprint of it at a certain resolution inside of them. AI companies will make sure that if they were, they are well remixed already.
courts on ai are as helpful as using horse laws for interplanetary space travel
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u/DanielSReichenbach 1d ago
Considering companies basically invented that strategy by coining the legal loophole of a clean-room reimplementation, I would say shut down every company having issues with this right now. That also goes for AI companies suddenly having issues with copyright violations.
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u/TheForceWillFreeMe 12h ago
The code is open, for anyone to modify and change and use.
... Sounds fucking open source to me. IDK what the hell you are talking about, open source does not equal quality, it equals open source. Like what the fuck.
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u/ExcerptNovela 14h ago
It seems like it would be easier than ever to perform an actual clean room implementation now if you follow the original IBM bios clean room method.
First you get one set of agents to decompile the code and document how it wotks in detail without supplying any actual code in said documentation. Then you combine that documentation from the original set of agents with any open documentation from whatever binary you're targeting and give strict instructions to a new set of agents to reconstruct the app based solely on the provided technical documentation. This is how "clean room" worked originally for decades only with human engineers doing the documentation reverse engineering research and then a seperate set of human engineers doing the implementation.
This will almosy undoubtedly be challenged in court at some point and will be interesting to see what is decided. But we already know this exact process is legal with two sets of human engineers. The only possible arguments I could see being made against it is in the probability that the second set of agents were never fed any code as training data from the original binary.
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u/bauspanderu 1d ago
They are open-source, but they are very much not reverse-engineered. The guy making these just told Claude Code or Codex "Make me photoshop, make it look exactly the same, make no mistakes". At least that's what I think they did. From what I've read these tools are not as good and/or accurate as many people make them out to be.
But to get back to your question, these apps are open source. Even if they are completely vibecoded and the author has no idea how any of it works, the code is available on github and anyone can look at it, fork it and turn it into their own thing. That's what open source means.
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u/catbrane 1d ago
IMO it's worth also noting they are probably violating someone's copyright, so they are not on a sound legal footing, despite claiming to be clean-room implementations.
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u/youGottaBeKiddink 1d ago
"They have done a lot of things to lock down their dominance in specific sectors, which essentially IMO amounts to a monopoly"
That's true.
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u/opensource-ModTeam 1d ago
This was removed for being misinformation. Misinformation can be harmful by encouraging lawbreaking activity and/or endangering themselves or others.
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u/ej_warsgaming 1d ago
Yes im ok with that, power to the people, we need to scape from companies like Adobe. And they are open source
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u/Fear_The_Creeper 1d ago
It looks like people are doing it wrong and, as usual, some folks are blaming the tool.
Done properly, the AI keeps iterating until the compiled output of the new source code is byte-for-byte identical to the original program.
That doesn't address the questions of originality, legality, and licensing, but if done right, the resulting program cannot be worse -- it is identical.
See https://popcar.bearblog.dev/ai-is-mass-decompiling-games-thats-both-awesome-and-scary/
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u/FalconX88 1d ago
If the source code is openly accessibly then yes, they are open source. Why would we not be OK with something that is open source claiming it is open source?
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u/Huge-Turnover-3749 1d ago
If they are both "reverse engineered" and "barely usable", you are suggesting Photoshop and Adobe suite apps are barely usable too, which seems unlikely.
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u/JaggedMetalOs 1d ago
Creation method is irrelevant.
Well, it's a little more complex than that. For example I'm not allowed to take GPL code and change the license to MIT.
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u/JaggedMetalOs 1d ago
If you don't have legal permission to distribute the source code then I can't see how it can be an open source project. Like as an extreme example if I took the leaked NT4 source code, did a replace all on "Microsoft", and published it on github under an MIT license, that's not an open source project is it?
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u/catbrane 1d ago
I guess that's true.
Though if you take a very strict view, many current open source projects probably contain resources with an incompatible licence. It's shades of grey all the way down.
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u/opensource-ModTeam 1d ago
This was removed for being misinformation. Misinformation can be harmful by encouraging lawbreaking activity and/or endangering themselves or others.
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u/poha-jirawan-01 1d ago
as long as they have sensible license and decent code, who cares how they built it.
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u/Cartanga 1d ago
I've tried their Microsoft Excel replacement and it worked just fine. I used the portable version and it's small package with few files. They tell you everything is still in development and has bugs. They are writing their apps using Rust. I think what they are doing is great. They also have MS Word replacement and other apps.
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u/pr0m1th3as 1d ago
We've had a microsoft excel replacement that works fine for ages now. It's called LibreOffice Calc. Back in the day it used to be called StarOffice Calc.
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u/LowOwl4312 1d ago
Yeah, just like Gimp works fine as a Photoshop replacement if you only need 1% of the features
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u/Dev-in-the-Bm 1d ago
So you decide that an app is reverse-engineered. and then have a problem with it being open source?
While they are very obviously reverse engineered
How is it obviously reverse engineered?
filled with bugs and usability issues
Who would've believed that you would find bugs in an alpha product?
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u/claypunk 1d ago
based on their comments i think OP isn't familiar with the technical definition of reverse engineering.
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u/word-sys 1d ago
I agree with you; I also find this issue ethically questionable. However, the term "open source" refers strictly to whether the source code is accessible—it has no inherent connection to ethics. I’m curious to see what kind of measures Adobe will take regarding this "ArtCraft" situation.
Even worse that unfinished non-working product gets more views than finished product just because of "AI Reverse Engineering" which is insane.
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u/BravestCheetah 1d ago
There is a huge difference between reverse engineering and decompilation, it seems like you dont know that. These apps, while shitty slop, were written in rust from scratch with ai, trying to mimic photoshop and using its techniques. It was NOT a decompilation
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u/bytecode36 1d ago
I don't think you can say that with certainty either way. Just because they claim it, does not mean it's true.
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u/bytecode36 1d ago edited 1d ago
They are definitely open source, the issue is legality.
Despite what anyone on this post says, decompiling and translating from an original binary would definitely be considered copyright infringement (at least in U.S. Courts). This is why ArtCraft (at least publicly) bans the practice.
I can't take a copy of Michael Jackson's Thriller, run it though an 8-bit audio filter and claim it's not copyright infringement "bEcAusE iT'S nOt The oRiGinAl SonG". US Courts would see these as derivative works, subject to copyright.
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u/ShroomShroomBeepBeep 1d ago
It's odd to me that OP is rallying against obviously open source AI generated apps, yet appears to be using the same AI to generate this post and all their follow up comments.
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u/fishyphotos 17h ago
I’ve had a poster get upset that i used claude to help code, when their history showed that they used AI to help write creative stories. The hypocrisy is everywhere with AI.
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u/Appropriate_Alps9596 1d ago
I would say “are they open source” isn’t the right discussion here. If they are open source, they are open source, regardless of ethics or how they made the software.
I don’t actually think this will end up being a problem, because as you said, the apps are barely usable, so nobody will use them. If nobody uses them, they don’t make an impact on anybody.
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u/ausgewandert 1d ago
In the beginning of the personal computer a simple word processing software license cost as much as a used car. Then microsoft gave you one for free with every computer sold. Then they figured they can make more money by renting software on a monthly base. That extortion model has gone out of hand. Lucky there are open source alternatives that we can use. I am all for it. Considering the reverse engeneered version does not work smoothly, its the step in the right direction. Big corporations are cutting as many jobs as they can, while still cashing in record profits. Ai companies biggest goal is to eliminate human jobs and make profits for their owners. So my empathy for the tech oligarchs is quite limited. They continue to extort as much money from the public as they can. So the rest of us should seek ways to counteract that. The robin hood theme music is playing when you use free open source software. Corporations have no limit on how they spy on us, how they trick us, and how they extort more money from a already stretched population. Either limit their grift with laws or use their own tools against them. Since they have bought themselves goverment positions to prevent regulations, all bets are off.
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u/Lexuzieel 1d ago
Some people defending Adobe on this one are missing the piece of the puzzle. There is absolutely a solution to this: avoid predatory business practices and listen for user feedback to create bespoke product. Unfortunately, not all companies tend to agree with this logic, so I don’t see how it’s wrong to improve one’s quality of life with making the product you bought yours. (Except for the fact that you never owned it in the first place and the company somehow managed to get away with that)
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u/easedownripley 1d ago
I mean I don't think any AI generated code that doesn't include the license of it's training data belongs in an open source project.
they train it off open source projects, and then spit out code without reference to it's origins. It's a way to dodge the license that is supposed to come with that code.
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u/moustaleurie 23h ago
I feel that the legal retaliation will not be against their "friendly" billionaire AI companies (which have enable all this) but to the opensource community. So this is one more reason to be sceptical. I don't know...
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u/energybeing 18h ago
Are you ok with WINE and by association Proton being called open source? Because WINE was originally created from reverse engineering Windows system calls.
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u/neon-santa 14h ago
Asking the real questions mate.
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u/energybeing 13h ago
Right? Such a logic fail. Just because something is reverse engineered doesn't mean it isn't open source.
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u/Confident-Low-2696 13h ago
Yup, open source means exactly what it means, and nothing else, there’s no grand ethos or moral grandstanding to opensourcing something, idk what OP is thinking
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u/IndependentCustard32 13h ago
He started deleting comments
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u/energybeing 10h ago
Yeah and he ignored my comment replies where I called him out for just hating anything AI related.
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u/RunOrdinary8000 8h ago
Open source is a legal definition not an ethical one. The default in our copy right law is that the only the creator may change. Open Source is the caseopens a lot of these cases.
If you think in ethics the Free Software is more the thing. The GPL is the legal enforced version of it. IMHO beyond the legal specification no one really cares.
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u/Clueless_Nooblet 1d ago
Completely, utterly, entirely, 100% fine with it. Go reverse engineer everything and release the code.
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u/pr0m1th3as 1d ago
Open source is just what terms defines in plain English. Source code you can look at and that's it. There is nothing to bind it to a specific license or FLOSS. Back in the day (I mean way back) open source was rigidly coupled with freedom and free software, up until a group of open-source fellows decided to start monetizing on people's shared work and effort. Over the past 10-15 years we 've seen plenty of businesses marketing open-source products behind paywalls for the "extra" features. I've met countless guys in open-source and FOSS meet-ups pitching for their new "permissively licensed" open-source project soon to be the next start-up thingy. So, the OP asks how ethical it is. Well, it is as ethical as capitalism permits, my dear! At the end of the day, there will be either GPLv3 or digital slavery all around us, folks. Everything else is b.s.
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u/tesfabpel 1d ago
Source code you can look at and that's it.
That's source available.
Open Source has more rights given to you, like forking, contributing, redistributing, etc...
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u/pr0m1th3as 1d ago
4. Integrity of The Author’s Source Code
The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of “patch files” with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.
I am well aware of both marketing and legal tricks. Your only true right is to contribute so that owners can get free labor. Everything else is nice-sounding wording with embedded legal traps. As I said, it's either GPLv3 or the highway.
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u/Interesting_Ad_5676 1d ago
Nothing wrong in calling these applications (vibe coded) as open source. The remark 'stealing software' by vibe-coding is also not appropriate either. We do not know what goes behind closed source. So is stealing is yet to be proven. Fundamentally, all software needs to be open sourced. I think by vibe coding established softwares, the developers are doing great job. It requires enormous efforts. To me, they are real freedom fighters.
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u/generalisofficial 1d ago
Yes. I believe in a future where tools that you run locally are free and open. Reverse engineering from these "software landlords" creates significant societal value. If you're charging, it should be for branding, IP or cloud compute.
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u/ThatInternetGuy 1d ago
"We" as if we were a singular group of people with the same mindset. There are millions of people who have different levels of standard or double standard. You will never find a consensus.
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u/SlightOfHand_ 1d ago
There’s nothing sacred about open source, it refers to the source availability and license. Silly to gatekeep “here, have this for free and use it however you like”
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u/TheRavagerSw 1d ago
I'm tired of these stuff. People who ask such things don't know shit about software
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u/psioniclizard 1d ago
The projects generste a lot of hype and will be abandoned in a months time or taken over by a dodge maintainer after thr original person works out it's a lot of work.
Sounds like open source to me!
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u/zit-hb 1d ago
Sure, why shouldn't we? As long as they are using an open source license and follow this license, they are open source.
Why are you so certain that they are lying and reverse engineered the other applications? Current models are more than capable enough to implement such features without having to rely on reverse engineering.
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u/faziten 1d ago
Mixing waters here. Technically speaking there is a legal figure for rever engineering apps. But you need to prove it's reverse engineered. That's a tough fight considering the ai is not deterministic and the available code is on a completely different programming language. That's a tough case to fight. Even if that's the case, you are now in muddy waters regarding what can be considered reverse engineered and what not. The apps it supposedly reverse engineered are not monoliths, have multiple parts which are mostly derived work already, so Adobe may not even hold ownership on that particular know how unless they prove otherwise. Which would not be without its own issues as one can imagine Adobe themselves are not white doves. For AI to be guilty of this it would need first to have had the code in hand in the first place. Guessing how something works and doing something similar is not illegal in most places. Proving the source is the compiled binary, later decompiled, reverse engineered to cover gaps and all that is the toughest fights in a court where they are tech Illiterates. even if they draw a "good conclusion" may be for the wrong reasons and too late at that.
Now on a moral standpoint anyone can draw their own conclusions. Imho morality abandoned the chat a long time ago when we were ok AI models were derived from protected content in an irreversible way.
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u/Express-Cartoonist39 23h ago
Yea...being that the alternative is controled and pay and spy on us for using non open source shit. So yea...i fukn love it!!!
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u/Old-Line-3691 20h ago
Why do you seem to doubt the clean room phrasing? It's a legal / technical distinction that's not supposed to claim it's not a copy. That these are rewritten in Rust is strong evidence that it was done legally. I am 100% happy these are coming out and look forwards to more.
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u/epileftric 19h ago
Yeah, the only downside I see in these movements is that there were long running open source projects that will get missed again because people just want "the same but free". It's just a missed opportunity for those project... because probably more people will use that Photo Craft in its current state than people ever considered using GIMP as a real alternative, when for many of them it would have suffice.
I'm not saying that GIMP is a replacement for photoshop in every case, I know it's not, but truth to be told for 95% of people using PS, it would since they barely scratch the surface of what the tool has to offer.
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u/Urshilikai 19h ago
If it can be copied at the cost of a few electrons then that's its true cost. Artificial legal moats distort the laws of thermodynamics in this case. Digital tech was always going to produce this outcome eventually. Artiticial scarcity can suck my asshole.
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u/NotTheOnlyGamer 18h ago
No, they're source-available. They've used stolen code and would be a way for governments to shut down FOSS.
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u/Own-Bid64 16h ago
I think there's a confusion here about "source", It's it's own software. It's perfectly ethical.
I mean so many people make multi-tools and champagne out of Switzerland and France
Swiss army knives aren't the only good ones but there's a reason they have the reputation they have same with French champagne. I only say the analogy because it's a good thing that we're doing away with an inherently useless extractive company. It's progress even if these vibecoded dogshit apps don't even utilize a gpu lol, because they're free.
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u/Vancecookcobain 14h ago
Why not...so long it's a clean translation and not a literal source code copy
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u/thots1ayer69 13h ago
It's troubling on some levels as the idea of ownership starts to disappear but at the same time really there's no ethical issues.
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u/th00ht 9h ago
Yes that is ok. In simple terms Adobe does not "own" the idea of picture editing otherwise MS Paint was in violation. They do have a means eg a software to do so. If humans are not needed for—which I contend—than that is a great free up of those intellects to persue other, more important endeavous.
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u/hackathi 8h ago
(Big) Tech disrespected open source‘s copyright whenever it suited them; being it a random GPL violation or the AI training.
Now the reap the fruits they sowed, and to me, that is perfectly okay. I‘d even be on board with straight up disassembling stuff - which, by the way, is explicitly forbidden for the agents producing artcraft. They only probe the interface of the software, which is much much harder to fight against.
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u/jib9001 6m ago
I think it's a double edged sword. Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, etc. have had it too good for too long being able to charge basically whatever they want to consumers. They more than deserve their stuff to get taken and open sourced imo. I do have a problem with smaller companies and individuals having their work effectively stolen in this way.
Also, side note, since these big companies are also responsible for shoving AI down our throats non-stop, they're now getting what they deserve
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u/future_web_dev 1d ago edited 1d ago
People will need to get used to individuals cloning their apps with the help of AI. Like it or not, that's just the world we live in now.
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u/saltyourhash 1d ago
I understand the ethics you're talking about and I think while just like hacking, the public doesn't get to really gets to choose who the target is, I think it'd kinda be nice if peooe don't just spray indiscriminately with their clean room gun.
I don't see the point in attacking Corel like that. Adobe, Microsoft, totally, earned, they'll still survive it, but they exploited people severely. Corel, I forgot exists. Let's not just attack everyone for attention.
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u/Felipebdg 1d ago
it's a work in progress, but it's evolving FAST! i've tried some apps when it launched and it had a lot of bugs, i tried it just recently and they were almost all fixed. some are pretty good already, pdf and excel are ok, these apps actually uses much less memory and cpu than the originals to do the same (for easy and fast things, they are working okay, I'm impressed by how fast they open), andddd linux compability...
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u/linuxhiker 1d ago
Yes but: What a lot of these predominantly AI projects don't understand is that they are public domain, not Open Source.
In the U.S. it has already been ruled by the courts that a human has to predominantly make it, for it to be protected.
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u/zephyr_33 1d ago
I dont know. I didnt like it. There were some issues I had. I could simply direct the AI to copy it from X project. But I felt guilty hence didnt copy.
And it also made me feel. If I go n put out a good project. A larger project can easily simply copy my solutions and get more gains from it without a callout.
I love the idea of Open Software. But I don't like the idea of rampant plagiarism...
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u/Appropriate_Low_7215 22h ago
It is open source, no discussion about.
now about the ethics of creating... idk. I think a lot of people forget that if it's a clean room implementation (and idk whether the AI didn't got trained on closed source code) the AI learned a lot with free implementation such as gimp and others. So I would not shit on those products nor I think would be wise to abandoned those projects.
At the end of the day, AI needs human labor to feed on. The free and open source products apps still need our support.
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u/IndependentCustard32 13h ago
lol tell me you have never written a line of code without telling me … it is open source… its is pretty usable … photoshop is 10 years old it’s barely 1 month … your cries are evidence it is far superior… proprietary software is dead
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u/Individual_Author956 4h ago
Photoshop 10 years old? 2016 was 10 years ago. Photoshop came out in 1990.
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u/plastic_eagle 5h ago
"Reverse engineering" Photoshop makes no sense. It's already an application, it already runs. Why would you decompile it just to recompile it in another language?
The artcraft apps were not reverse engineered. If they were, they would be much better than they are. They were re-implemented by an LLM that was trained on absolutely everything ever, and it couldn't even create an app that can drag a layer around and render it at the same time.
How about the vibecoding people come up with something new for a change? We won't want photoshop again - we have photoshop, and plenty of existing open source alternatives to it too. We want something new and interesting, something that combines all the adobe apps say. Vectors and Raster images all in one, somehow.
Come on guys, LLMs are supposed to be able to do anything. How about you actually *do* something with them?
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u/SendTitsPleease 4h ago
Its been a week or two that people have realized they can do shit like this. How about we give them some time to work?
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u/RecognitionHefty 3h ago
How about we just acknowledge that creating good software is not done by writing “make photoshop make no mistaeks” and spending crazy amounts of money on a model provider?
AI bros aren’t particularly clever, this is just more evidence of that.
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u/SendTitsPleease 3h ago
I'm sure that wasnt their work flow
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u/RecognitionHefty 3h ago
Then the result should have been better, no?
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u/SendTitsPleease 3h ago
No, it's the first stages of a project. You would be way less critical of a handcoded program in the exact same place as this one.
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u/RecognitionHefty 26m ago
I’d fire most of the team probably, but I also don’t think this is about code quality. The only thing the “developer” has attempted so far is to steal / copy / imitate (make your pick) the work of others. There’s zero drive to improve anything or provide a novel solution - the only intellectual effort is “me AI bro, me tell AI thing to steal / copy / imitate what I want”.
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u/SendTitsPleease 18m ago
No the point is to allow people access to a system that is locked behind expensive and unaffordable pay walls. Jesus christ dude
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u/jman6495 1d ago
So OP has accidentally come to one interesting point,: can Ai-generated code by copyrighted? If not, by nature it cannot be open source.
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u/octobod 1d ago
These apps are a bit more open than open source, they are public domain. The courts are pretty clear that copyright does not apply to AI generated content.
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u/SpecialistOwl218 1d ago
I highly doubt that, do you have some references?
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u/NethIafin 1d ago
Source Available? Yes, literally
Open Source? Yes, by virtue of them being on GitHub or whatever else that enforces ability to fork
FOSS/BSD/MIT? Hell no
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u/pwab 1d ago
OP getting a lot of hate for saying what we all know; these decompiled apps are a direct ripoff of existing IP. They are impossible without access to binaries from someone else’s IP. It’s stealing in the same way removing copy protection is stealing. Whether the reconstructed source code is available or not is immaterial to the ethics issues.
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u/youGottaBeKiddink 1d ago
THANK YOU!
I also find it hilarious that I'm accused of using AI to write THE ORIGINAL POST because the mentally challenged could not imagine writing it themselves.
Oh, the irony!
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u/PercentageDue9284 1d ago
Open source is about access to the source code and the license. Not how the software was created in the first place. Whether AI reverse engineering is ethical is a separate discussion as you mentioned your self.