Developer Replaces Seven Core Adobe Applications with 100% Rust "Clean-Room" Clones Built Using Claude AI

By Design & Technology Desk

In a bold move that has ignited intense debate across the software development and creative design industries, a veteran software engineer has successfully engineered open-source, 100% Rust-based replacements for seven of Adobe’s most dominant creative applications: Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro.

The project, which emerged publicly on platforms like Hacker News and Reddit, was spearheaded by Brandon Thomas. Frustrated by recurring disputes over subscription models, controversial artificial intelligence terms of use, and notorious cancellation fee structures, Thomas utilized the Claude AI assistant alongside the memory-safe programming language Rust to rebuild the suite from the ground up.

While the project has been lauded by anti-subscription advocates as a watershed moment for independent software development, seasoned industry experts are warning of severe limitations, questioning the long-term viability, reliability, and security of AI-assisted, rapidly generated professional applications.

Main Facts

The initiative centers around a suite of independent, open-source software tools designed to replicate the core functionalities of Adobe’s Creative Cloud ecosystem.

• The Developer: Brandon Thomas, a software engineer with 15 years of industry experience specializing in high-volume payment rails and robotics automation, built the applications.
• The Tech Stack: The tools were written entirely in Rust—a systems programming language renowned for its performance and safety—with heavy utilization of Claude, an advanced generative AI assistant.
• The Applications Cloned: Seven major Adobe programs:
  1. Photoshop (raster graphics editing)
  2. Illustrator (vector graphics)
  3. Premiere (video editing)
  4. Lightroom (photo management and color grading)
  5. After Effects (visual effects and motion graphics)
  6. InDesign (page layout and desktop publishing)
  7. Acrobat Pro (PDF creation and management)
• The Core Motivations: Frustration with Adobe’s aggressive subscription renewal terms, controversial AI data-scraping policies, and punitive software cancellation fees—culminating in a widespread consumer backlash.
• The Licensing Model: Completely free, open-source, and unencumbered by subscription paywalls, granting users full ownership of the source code.

Chronology of Events

The events leading up to this disruptive software release reflect growing friction between monolithic tech giants and creative professionals.

1. The Growing Discontent with Adobe’s Business Practices

Over the past several years, Adobe has faced mounting scrutiny from users and regulatory bodies alike. Controversies peaked when users raised severe privacy concerns regarding updated terms of use that seemingly granted Adobe broad licenses to train their generative AI models on private user files.

Concurrently, public anger boiled over regarding subscription terms. Users frequently complained about complex "dark patterns" embedded in the cancellation process, which often slapped unwary consumers with steep early-termination fees if they attempted to break their annual contracts midway. This friction eventually culminated in legal actions, including a notable $150 million settlement agreement involving subscription cancellation transparency.

2. The Breaking Point for Brandon Thomas

For Brandon Thomas, the tipping point arrived when he fell victim to Adobe’s subscription cancellation policies one too many times. Drawing upon his decade-long expertise with the Rust programming language, Thomas decided to test the boundaries of modern AI-assisted development. Rather than writing every line manually or relying on traditional multi-year corporate software cycles, he leveraged Claude to rapidly prototype clean-room codebases emulating industry-standard creative pipelines.

3. The Public Reveal on Hacker News and Reddit

In early 2024, Thomas unveiled his project to the developer community via Reddit’s r/SaaS community and Hacker News. His announcement—declaring the creation of open-source, Rust-native replacements for the entire Adobe suite—instantly went viral.

"I’m not just some casual vibe coder. I’m a 15-year industry veteran who has written everything from six-nines payment rails that move billions of dollars of transaction volume a day to advanced robotics and optics automation," Thomas wrote to skeptics on Reddit, emphasizing his technical background.

Soon after, tech commentators, design publications, and open-source advocates began dissecting the broader implications of what Thomas bluntly summarized on Hacker News with the phrase: "Software is over."

Supporting Data & Technical Context

To understand the magnitude—and the skepticism—surrounding Thomas’s project, it is essential to examine the underlying technologies and the sheer scale of what Adobe has built over decades.

• Decades of Engineering: Adobe Photoshop first launched in 1990. Over nearly 35 years, the software has accumulated millions of lines of highly optimized C++ code, incorporating complex color science, hardware acceleration, typography rendering engines, and plugin architectures. Replicating even a fraction of this stability in a short timeframe is a monumental engineering challenge.
• The Rise of Rust: Rust has steadily gained traction among developers for its ability to prevent memory management bugs without needing a garbage collector. However, transitioning a complex graphical user interface (GUI) and compute-heavy rendering engine to Rust from scratch is rarely a trivial task, even with AI assistance.
• The Threat of Alternative Ecosystems: Thomas’s tools join a growing chorus of legitimate market alternatives. Software like Affinity (by Serif, recently acquired by Canva) and free open-source mainstays like GIMP, Inkscape, and DaVinci Resolve have historically offered robust, non-subscription or lifetime-license alternatives to Adobe products. However, none were built primarily through AI-accelerated workflows in such a compressed timeframe.

Official Responses & Industry Reactions

The creative and tech communities have reacted with a mixture of awe, skepticism, and outright concern.

The Open-Source Perspective

Many independent developers have praised Thomas for exposing the fragility of modern software monopolies. In online forums, tech enthusiasts celebrated the democratization of complex toolsets, arguing that if AI can help a solo developer draft functional replacements for multi-billion-dollar suites, the traditional software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscription model may be facing structural disruption.

Professional Designers Sound the Alarm

Conversely, professional graphic designers, video editors, and enterprise studios have expressed deep skepticism. Trust is a core currency in professional creative workflows, where software crashes can result in missed deadlines, lost revenue, and corrupted client deliverables.

As one prominent commenter on Reddit noted, summarizing the sentiment of many working creatives:

"There is a pretty fricking huge difference between an unproven software that vaguely looks like Photoshop and probably can do some of the things that Photoshop can do, and a dependable, robust productivity software that you can count on working right and being maintained long-term."

Adobe’s Position

To date, Adobe has not issued a direct, formal statement regarding Brandon Thomas’s specific open-source clones. However, the company has consistently defended its subscription model and cloud-integrated ecosystem as necessary to deliver continuous feature updates, seamless multi-device workflows, and cutting-edge generative AI capabilities like Adobe Firefly directly inside professional toolsets.

Broader Implications for the Future of Software and Creativity

The release of these AI-assisted clones forces a critical conversation about the future of software development, intellectual property, and the psychological contract between creators and toolmakers.

1. Is "Software Really Over"?

When Thomas proclaimed that "software is over," he was pointing to a future where code may no longer need to be painstakingly handcrafted over decades by massive corporate engineering teams. If a single developer can marshal an AI model to replicate intricate industrial software packages in days or weeks, the barrier to entry for software creation drops precipitously.

However, critics argue that the inverse is true: while generating a rough prototype of software has never been easier, maintaining, securing, and scaling software for production environments remains a profoundly human discipline.

2. The Crisis of Trust in Creative Software

The project underscores a profound cultural fracture. When major corporations push users too far with aggressive monetization models, dark patterns, and perceived overreach regarding data privacy and AI scraping, they inadvertently foster an insurgent culture. Designers are actively searching for an "exit strategy" from the subscription trap. Even if Thomas’s specific tools are not yet ready to replace a Hollywood video-editing suite or a high-end advertising agency’s workflow, they serve as a proof-of-concept for user rebellion.

3. The Livelihood Dilemma

Ultimately, professional creatives operate in high-stakes environments. While hobbyists and open-source advocates may enthusiastically adopt free, community-driven alternatives, enterprise studios require backwards compatibility, robust plugin support, customer service SLAs, and enterprise-grade security.

Whether AI-generated codebases can mature fast enough to bridge the gap between anti-monopoly protest statements and dependable daily work tools remains the defining question of this new digital era. For now, the design world is watching closely as the monopoly status quo faces its most unconventional challenge yet.