Have you heard of Artcraft? Creating suit of opensource apps within weeks is insane!
Yes, Iāve heard of it and have it installed. Iāve tried their version of after effects and itās basically the same thing with a few missing features. I love it 
Opensource all the way. Itās built on RUST, which made me think, what if we rebuilt Synfig this way, but anyway just a thought, but yes Iām laughing at Adobe
Oh also, itās not reverse engineering!
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From what I have heard and seen ā¦
This is not creation, it is reverse engineering to produce source code, modification to the source code to avoid to look exactly the same and recompilation to a new binary ā¦
Well ā¦
This is not creation, it is theft of Intellectual Property
Even though Iām a big fan of Open Source, this has not been done for Interoperability with closed source software.
It has been done for stealing the work of companies whose living is based on it.
Also they are not perfect copies and some functionnalities donāt work the same (or at all).
Another point is that having a bunch of source code doesnāt provide documentation or possibility to integrate features in other software, a big part of those source had proprietary license.
Another major issue is that the future versions of such software will be mostly cloud-based is SAAS to avoid such a theft to occur anymore, and you will have to pay recurring fees to use them ā¦ pushing even more the strategy of full online/connected/cloud-based.
Innovation comes either by volunteers or by people paid to do the job making a living of it.
AI can rebuild comparing the results with code available on platforms like GItHub.
The day will come when no human will produce code to study anymore, and we will have only slop software.
So, it is worth it at the end?
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Ināt it a form of clean-room reimplementation and not specifically fully reverse engineering? My thoughts on it is that itās a way to get the large corporations to see the effects that Ai has had on creatives by doing the same thing to them that they are doing to us. Showing them that look, you are stealing our work and promoting the loss of jobs, so we are going to use the same tool you promote to show you that you need to stop focusing on money only.
If it is producing a source code from a binary, even rewriting it in Rust, it is still reverse engineering ā¦
It is done to make it āin-the-wildā so unstopable
We have the source of Synfig in C++, no need to reverse it from binary ā¦
Also there are still a few people programming in Rust compared to C++ ā¦
And it is important for open-source to have as many potential devs to be able to contribute
I understand and agree with what you say. My initial response is based on my history with Adobe. They are all about money, so I just feel happy when they get a fight.
And i see your point on dev contribution
At the end, they will be even more winners.
People will have easier access to those ālimited versionsā and even more dragged to online slavery.
Think also that everything that you will do in the cloud will be under their control, your art, your āthoughtsā, even able to restrict you to produce some subversive/controversial art that you could have produced on your local computer.
As long as AI is avalaible, you donāt need to be a fullly qualified dev to produce software but what if (or when) they will drastically limited the access to it?
Devs will not be able to produce a simple hello world, most of the dev tools already need an internet connection to download tools and libs on-the-fly (npm, maven, crates, composer ā¦)
At the end, traditionnal art will be the only thing that will remain, digital tools will be only available for those who pay, and less open-source as we will not be able to compete.
It is like cash disappearing in favor of digital banking ā¦
You will not be able to use it as you want, when you want, anonymously (for privacy), and it could be taken down when they will want it if you donāt comply with their politics ā¦
Thatās the way the world is going. But consumers have the power; if we stop using their tools, then they loose. We just need to continue using and promoting open-source tools. But we still need to find a way to use Ai in an ethical way since itās more or less here to stay.
I watched a few weeks ago a video with an interview of a (french) boss of IT devs company ā¦
His choice is now:
- Every dev of his teams has to use AI to produce code, no matter the cost, it will be paid from the company
- Only thinking about specifications, not implementation
- No code maintainance/development anymore.
The code (implementation) will be entirely generated from the specifications, everytime, without to care about optimization/reusabilty, always a one-shot source code. - The gain of productivity is enormous because it is only the beginning and there is not a lot of concurrence doing it yet.
But at the end, everyone will do it, pay for the AI, depending on it, not being able to implement anything nor understand any code.
Also, why in Rust?
As seen in the video, Rust is a lot more strict and verbose during compilation, it can be debugged from the compilation time by agents instead of discover bugs at runtime like C++, Java, JS ā¦
The use of this language for this operation of reverse engineering/reimplementation is not random choice
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Next week, Brandon Thomas drops āPuppetCraftā, a clean room implementation of CelAction and his direct answer to the high expectations set by Bandit (Blueyās dad) as the ultimate model of modern fatherhood. 
Anyhow.. on a more serious note. From the looks of it Adobe and Microsoft will now probably start to lobby for changes to the law. We could actually see Brandon Thomasā action of retribution affect opensource software in a negative way.
Iāll let Louis explain..
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He confirms my thoughts about the facts that they will push to make the law harder for reversing, open-source and freedom in general.
Also keep in mind that reversing is needed to identify and fight viruses and malwares.
In a world where you canāt analyze a binary, you can install pieces of software with a behaviour dedicated to you.
From an app store, they know who you are, nothing prevent to send a spyware on your very phone or computer if you are a political opponent, or even to send āproofs of your guiltā in your back (manipulating browser history, uploading photos/videos to your deepest unknown folder ā¦).
Even Adobe wants to have the right to see your stuff.
There was a time playing Enemy Territory implied to use Punkbuster anti-cheat as a service, doing screenshots that could be outside of the game itself (not even talking about Steam Kernel-Level anti-cheat)
Most of systems now require reproducible builds to avoid bianries to be tampered during the compilation or via the supply-chain (a GitHub Action build could āinjectā stuff if GitHub would like it)
So yes, we still need to have the possibility to control and analyze what could harm us without to know it!
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I lived in Russia in the '90s and '00s, and I remember perfectly well how you could buy absolutely any cutting-edge software for the price of a bottle of beer, literally everywhere. This led to a situation where literally no one knew, or could even imagine, that there might be an image editor other than Photoshop, an OS other than Windows, and so forth. Okay, sure, a few people knew, but they were in the absolute minority. Microsoft, Adobe, and the rest completely monopolized the market, giving zero chance to any competitors, open-source ones included. But then they started tightening the screws on software licensing, and it started to hurt. Hurt a lot! Well, now history is repeating itself on a global scale.
We are standing on the threshold of an era where the actual software code is worth nothing. Howeverā¦ What did these guys do? They basically got a bootleg copy of popular software. And so what? Recreating something that already works isnāt progress, itās a dead end. To create something genuinely new, you need to know how to explore problems, define tasks, and design solutions. AI doesnāt know how to do that.
Right now, Iām vibe-coding an unexpected project ā a tool for directorial script breakdown. I havenāt written a single line of actual executable code, but my brain is absolutely boiling. Iām genuinely putting in no less effort and time into designing the architecture and working out the user interaction mechanics than I did back when I was coding everything by hand. Even more! Because now, I can actually bring to life everything Iāve envisioned. On top of that, Iāve drawn a ton of assets ā animation sprites for the character models. This whole system runs on JavaScript. Pure, vanilla JavaScript ā I didnāt use a single framework or third-party library! It sounds and looks like absolute madness to me, but it works. And it works exactly how I want it to, and itās crazy fast even on very old computers, like an underpowered little 2011 EeePC netbook.
I figure once I get this project to a usable state, itāll be time to dust off my old pet projects. At the very least, I should clean up the code so I donāt die of embarrassment if anyone besides me ever sees it.
And yes, this entire post was translated into English by an AI.
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Thatās what I was saying a lot of time ago:
Singularity will come earlier than expected, not because Artificial Intelligence will become a lot superior but because we are becoming dumber and dumber !
How world came to shit? Why humanity allowed this to happen?
Look what happens in France ā¦
My friends are telling me āI understand why you left this countryā 
Take a screenshot of any video and you can count the points of IQ on the fingers of one hand!
Even Neanderthals were make better usage of stones instead of only throwing them!
The more people have access to comfort, the more they regress intellectually because they donāt need to do efforts.
Thatās why we need AI, to compensate
AI makes people think even less. If you donāt use neurons they lose connections, something like with not training: if you donāt use muscles you lose them