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Adobe is Screwed. So is every other software company

Just playing devils advocate, how is this different in your mind to just uploading a hacked version of these apps for anyone to use?
 
Otto Von Herunterhängen said:
It isn't the same code, they wrote it from scratch using the functionality. See Borland vs Lotus 1-2-3 from 1990 and you'll see the same thing without the AI.

It's also why Adobe is likely to lose a lawsuit.
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How do you not use any of the original code if they are able to unlock proprietary Adobe formats and functionality. To me this isn't any different from China reverse engineering other peoples IP
 
MCDesigns said:
How do you not use any of the original code if they are able to unlock proprietary Adobe formats and functionality. To me this isn't any different from China reverse engineering other peoples IP
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They open sourced the code. If they did use reverse engineering Adobe should be able to show it in court, the code is all there. Because of that my bet is they didn't.

And that actually is the same type of case that I mentioned in the link above. The look and feel is the same, the code is entirely different. And other programs created traditionally can read and use Adobe file formats, that's what the PDF format is all about for one, but other programs read PSD's also.
 
MCDesigns said:
How do you not use any of the original code if they are able to unlock proprietary Adobe formats and functionality. To me this isn't any different from China reverse engineering other peoples IP
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File formats aren't that difficult to reverse engineer in principle. Every format has to have some logical structure, and code is running on your computer so you can watch what's it doing. What makes it harder is that formats grow in complexity over time, often by deliberate obfuscation, misleading documentation or encryption, but all that can be solved. The main hurdle is that there just isn't that many people doing that stuff, and people have to sleep, eat and do other things. While with AI you can send a couple thousand agents to go wild, each one working maybe 100x faster than any single human, and they have the knowledge of all the software, code and tricks that exist.

As for functionality? Everything that exists in software today is built from algorithms and approaches that are described in computer science papers somewhere, and everything possible ever is already implemented and documented in some example code snippet somewhere. If you had a couple thousand years, you could be browsing those same papers and code, and build a perfect copy of Photoshop or the Unreal engine from scratch yourself.

The majority of software is open source already anyway, or directly based on it. Proprietary software isn't where the money is, it's the services and infrastructure built around it. This has been true for a while now. If you have an iPhone, a lot of its OS is based on BSD and KHTML. Even if they fully open sourced it or someone cloned it perfectly, it wouldn't matter, you're buying an iPhone for other reasons, not because it has a closed source OS.

Btw if someone stops using Adobe just because some clones pop up, it basically means they could've already been using something else for years. Especially since most people use maybe like 0.1% of functionality, they just want the familiar interface. Nothing new under the sun.
 
TailsWin said:
File formats aren't that difficult to reverse engineer in principle. Every format has to have some logical structure, and code is running on your computer so you can watch what's it doing. What makes it harder is that formats grow in complexity over time, often by deliberate obfuscation, misleading documentation or encryption, but all that can be solved. The main hurdle is that there just isn't that many people doing that stuff, and people have to sleep, eat and do other things. While with AI you can send a couple thousand agents to go wild, each one working maybe 100x faster than any single human, and they have the knowledge of all the software, code and tricks that exist.

As for functionality? Everything that exists in software today is built from algorithms and approaches that are described in computer science papers somewhere, and everything possible ever is already implemented and documented in some example code snippet somewhere. If you had a couple thousand years, you could be browsing those same papers and code, and build a perfect copy of Photoshop or the Unreal engine from scratch yourself.

The majority of software is open source already anyway, or directly based on it. Proprietary software isn't where the money is, it's the services and infrastructure built around it. This has been true for a while now. If you have an iPhone, a lot of its OS is based on BSD and KHTML. Even if they fully open sourced it or someone cloned it perfectly, it wouldn't matter, you're buying an iPhone for other reasons, not because it has a closed source OS.

Btw if someone stops using Adobe just because some clones pop up, it basically means they could've already been using something else for years. Especially since most people use maybe like 0.1% of functionality, they just want the familiar interface. Nothing new under the sun.
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And some people already have moved on. The sticking point is the user interface, and as I said above, those are not covered by copyright, Borland vs Lotus decided that 36 years ago.

I think proprietary software's days are numbered. Good riddance.
 
One last point, and I'll move on. Adobe didn't develop as far as I can tell any of the software they rent. They bought it all

Including Photoshop, they bought that one in 1995. The one acquisition they made that really pissed me off was Macromedia in 2005. You may recognize them as the creators of Flash which Adobe proceeded to completely screw up to the point it was unusable and had to be discontinued. They also discontinued Cold Fusion, a server scripting language like PHP that was quite remarkable at the time.

So they've never been so much a software development company as a "buy out and monetize" one. Screw them.
 
I don't think it's gonna change as much as some expect. As long as corporations exist, they are gonna keep paying for Adobe and MS, because for them the price isn't much. That means they'll keep hiring people for that specific software. That means normies will keep buying or pirating it. You'd be surprised how many regular people still use Adobe Reader or outright pirated Acrobat just to open PDFs. Those that wanted to move to something else, were able to do it for ages.

The only reason to use Adobe is for easy exchanges within the industry. As long as nothing replaces it as a de facto standard, that won't change. There's a ton of programs that do the same thing or better than Adobe, they just don't have the Adobe name.

Name recognition and inertia are king. Look at the Chrome browser. Even if you need 100% compatibility and 99% the same interface, there's a ton of other Chromium-based browsers, and yet people still use this when presented with a choice what to use.

If anything, this might make things a bit worse. There will be a crapton of these vibe coded clones, and most won't be maintained or ever updated, or even properly tested. You won't know what to choose or who to ask for support if you need something. Unless you expect to vibecode your own version or updates and maintain it yourself, you're better off using something that already existed before this.

Now yea, the entire concept of software as we know it is probably gonna collapse soon, as well as the job market and society as a whole, but until then, I doubt Adobe and the likes will feel this all that much. This will only kill off some smaller software devs that aren't as established.
 
TailsWin said:
I don't think it's gonna change as much as some expect. As long as corporations exist, they are gonna keep paying for Adobe and MS, because for them the price isn't much. That means they'll keep hiring people for that specific software. That means normies will keep buying or pirating it. You'd be surprised how many regular people still use Adobe Reader or outright pirated Acrobat just to open PDFs. Those that wanted to move to something else, were able to do it for ages.

The only reason to use Adobe is for easy exchanges within the industry. As long as nothing replaces it as a de facto standard, that won't change. There's a ton of programs that do the same thing or better than Adobe, they just don't have the Adobe name.

Name recognition and inertia are king. Look at the Chrome browser. Even if you need 100% compatibility and 99% the same interface, there's a ton of other Chromium-based browsers, and yet people still use this when presented with a choice what to use.

If anything, this might make things a bit worse. There will be a crapton of these vibe coded clones, and most won't be maintained or ever updated, or even properly tested. You won't know what to choose or who to ask for support if you need something. Unless you expect to vibecode your own version or updates and maintain it yourself, you're better off using something that already existed before this.

Now yea, the entire concept of software as we know it is probably gonna collapse soon, as well as the job market and society as a whole, but until then, I doubt Adobe and the likes will feel this all that much. This will only kill off some smaller software devs that aren't as established.
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Acrobat Writer in particular, while there are alternatives out there, up until now the stand alone versions are pretty much all subscription models and too damned expensive. There are free online ones, hell you can edit PDF's in your browser these days, but it's really limited.

Frankly I was dreading leaving Acrobat more than Photoshop, in either case I was planning to drop my cloud subscription in December when I fully retire, I don't need it for work anymore then. This development has the potential to make it a lot easier since there is no learning curve involved.
 
Ok I don't know how you specifically use PDF. Maybe you need what Adobe has. Everyone I know, needs to either 1) fill forms (most basic readers can do that) or 2) 'print' a document into PDF (virtual PDF printers have been around since the 90's and most OSs these days come with it by default). Then occasionally maybe they crop a picture or something in Photoshop. And they keep the entire Adobe suite around just for that. Probably some old pirated version, and then they bitch it can't open webp lol.

Anyway. I'd be wary about these clones for the reasons I mentioned. I think it makes more sense to take a hit on the learning curve, most programs that do similar things use the same concepts and use similar interfaces. I had started with Photoshop v. 5 or so, went up to CS2, then tried couple others and eventually stayed with Gimp. It's all the same logic, you have the lasso tool, or the curves dialog, or layers, they all do the same stuff regardless of the program. Even with programs that differ more, like video editors, you'll be up to speed in a few days at most. Usually it's a lot easier than one expects, and the new program may even do some things better.

Or just forget about old tools altogether and move over to AI workflow. Or vibecode your own app that does exactly what you want. That is the real power of this development. Cloning existing legacy apps 1:1 is the worst and laziest use of this tech, and it's a step back.
 
TailsWin said:
Ok I don't know how you specifically use PDF. Maybe you need what Adobe has. Everyone I know, needs to either 1) fill forms (most basic readers can do that) or 2) 'print' a document into PDF (virtual PDF printers have been around since the 90's and most OSs these days come with it by default). Then occasionally maybe they crop a picture or something in Photoshop. And they keep the entire Adobe suite around just for that. Probably some old pirated version, and then they bitch it can't open webp lol.

Anyway. I'd be wary about these clones for the reasons I mentioned. I think it makes more sense to take a hit on the learning curve, most programs that do similar things use the same concepts and use similar interfaces. I had started with Photoshop v. 5 or so, went up to CS2, then tried couple others and eventually stayed with Gimp. It's all the same logic, you have the lasso tool, or the curves dialog, or layers, they all do the same stuff regardless of the program. Even with programs that differ more, like video editors, you'll be up to speed in a few days at most. Usually it's a lot easier than one expects, and the new program may even do some things better.

Or just forget about old tools altogether and move over to AI workflow. Or vibecode your own app that does exactly what you want. That is the real power of this development. Cloning existing legacy apps 1:1 is the worst and laziest use of this tech, and it's a step back.
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Fillable forms with logic was the main stumbling block. The clones were always a little short on that. And as I said most of them were damned near as expensive as Acrobat Writer with much less capability.

Photoshop I use to create my wound effects I add to geoshells so a lot of layering, some transformations and of course I have to create mask layers as well as diffuse ones. I probably ought to start doing normal maps too, but I'm lazy.

I've tried GIMP, I never got comfortable with it's interface. Same thing with Blender.
 
Fyi Gimp has changed a lot with 3.0 last year, and is now back to more active development. It's much more stereotypical now. But there's a lot of other apps that do the same kind of stuff. I was just pointing out that basics are the same, since they all copy each other.

The question is whether those clone apps have enough compatibility that they can open those files of yours without issues? File compatibility isn't just all or nothing, and those complex layers are the first thing to break, especially if you use various blending modes and masks. The math algos between apps use differs, and rounding errors or floating point differences then become visible as they pile up. I've seen people try out those clones and while most things work, details are often broken or differ. One really has to know what they're doing when coding up these things. Don't expect it's gonna be perfect.

Man, normal maps are a fucking trip. If you haven't got into that yet and want to do such things, you're better off pivoting completely towards AI graphics and work with that. Unless you're fine with just some noise bumps that is.
 
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