Tech • AI • Robotics • Game
Every app on Earth is now open source... whether it likes it or not
6/10TL;DR
A new open-source effort to recreate major Adobe Creative Cloud apps in Rust has drawn attention to how far AI-assisted reverse engineering can go, while also exposing the large gap between cloning familiar interfaces and matching mature professional software.
KEY POINTS
Artcraft targets Adobe’s core apps
Developer Brandon Thomas launched Artcraft, a free open-source suite intended to mirror seven major Adobe applications, including equivalents to Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere. The stated motivation was frustration with Adobe’s subscription model and repeated cancellation fees. The software also runs on Linux, a platform Adobe has never officially supported for Creative Cloud.
A familiar interface does not guarantee usable performance
The video-editing component, FilmCraft, closely imitates Premiere’s interface, making it immediately recognizable to existing users. But practical testing showed heavy lag on timeline playback, delayed audio metering, and generally sluggish behavior even on basic edits. Transition effects also fell short of Premiere’s quality, highlighting how difficult it is to match years of optimization in media software.
Reverse engineering tools are becoming more accessible
Attention also centered on a separate project, Reverse Engineer Anything, or REA, which aims to simplify binary analysis. It is presented as capable of decompiling a wide range of software artifacts, including native executables, JVM bytecode, ECMA-335 assemblies, firmware, and OCI container layers. In plain terms, the project promises to turn compiled programs back into something closer to readable logic.
Ghidra remains central to the process
Although REA is framed as an AI-friendly front end, the heavy lifting still depends on established reverse-engineering tooling, especially Ghidra. A user can point the system at locally installed software, ask it to inspect a specific feature, and receive pseudo-code, assembly, strings, symbols, and call references. That output is still rough, but it can become a starting point for reimplementation rather than a finished replacement for source code.
The real use case may be selective rebuilding, not perfect cloning
Instead of recreating an entire product like Premiere, the more practical idea is to analyze one feature at a time and rebuild only what is needed. That could allow developers to produce smaller, task-specific tools without the overhead of hundreds of legacy features. It is a narrower ambition than making commercial suites obsolete, but potentially a more realistic one.
Claims that “every app is now open source” are overstated
The underlying point is not that proprietary software has suddenly become transparent, but that reverse engineering is getting easier for smaller teams and even individuals. Decompiled output is incomplete, noisy, and often far from production-ready. Mature products such as Adobe Premiere still reflect decades of engineering work, testing, codec support, performance tuning, and workflow design that cannot be reproduced overnight.
The broader pressure on software vendors is still real
Even if early clones are crude, free alternatives built with Rust, AI coding assistants, and modern reverse-engineering workflows could chip away at expensive subscription software over time. The threat is strongest where users need only a subset of features and are willing to trade polish for control, portability, or price. That creates strategic pressure on vendors whose business models depend on locking users into large, all-in-one suites.
CONCLUSION
The emergence of projects like Artcraft and REA suggests that proprietary software is becoming easier to imitate and dissect, but not easy to replace. For now, the technology looks more likely to produce rough, specialized alternatives than to make entrenched platforms like Adobe Creative Cloud obsolete.
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