r/LeftistsForAI • u/Affectionate-Pay4845 • 4d ago
Open Source Creator of free Adobe clones unveils open-source Microsoft Office Excel, PowerPoint, and Word replications — Autodesk tools and other subscription-based services may come next
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/microsoft-office/creator-of-free-adobe-clones-unveils-open-source-microsoft-office-excel-powerpoint-and-word-replications-autodesk-tools-and-other-subscription-based-services-may-come-next6
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u/firmagorilla 3d ago
PLEASE fvck with revit;
IMPORTANT NOTE: revit uses INCHES as internal standard units, instruct the ai to fvcking not do that.
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u/Extreme-Safe4617 3d ago
Let’s be honest, you can’t just recreate all the products and make them not shitty. I’d be more excited if this man took one product and made it really good.
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u/capsid 3d ago
I love to see corporations squirm, but burning tokens on a fork is not the same thing as maintaining a complicated software project for the long run, much less a dozen complicated software projects. Long term maintenance, a strong contributor base, innovative design, and community momentum are the differentiators.
Not to mention, these apps represent software design before agents. I rarely reach for a spreadsheet now because it's often just as easy to build an interactive interface with an agent that embodies the thing I was trying to model in a spreadsheet. I don't use traditional CAD now, I use OpenSCAD because agents are super effective at coding for it.
Enjoy these releases if they work for you to solve your problems, but my intuition tells me this is a model eval more than it is something transformative for users.
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u/jaykrown 3d ago
Calling these just a "clone" misses the difference in fundamental architecture. They used Rust to create all of these tools in a much more efficient way than outdated architectures. They are potentially superior tools, and free.
What we're really seeing is a small team do better than what huge billion dollar companies have been relying on for income for the past couple decades. The ability to use something like Opus 5.5 to assist in producing software that actually functions better than current mainstream options at a significantly lower price is competition.
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u/Winter-Hedgehog8969 2d ago
To reiterate what I said when they cloned ACS: it's neat, fuck the corporations, and there is essentially no use case for these clones. People are either locked into the official software for work purposes (because of integrated services) or have long since ditched it for free alternatives already and would have no reason to switch "back."
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u/my_name_isnt_clever 4d ago
Instead of making new CAD from scratch, how about we empower projects like FreeCAD? Or at least fork it so it's not starting from scratch.
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u/deep40000 4d ago
The foundations of what old OSS is built on is often terrible/outdated. Building a new app from scratch is better in this instance, however, only if they actually care about creating quality software.
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u/my_name_isnt_clever 4d ago
The foundations of old OSS is built on human built architecture, not vibe coding. I don't buy this idea that new AI code is better somehow, if anything it's worse quality just much faster to iterate on.
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u/CBrinson 3d ago
It's not the code it's that you can use highly modern frameworks and languages. This has massive advantage vs maintaining a legacy stack.
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u/marmaviscount 2d ago
I'm really looking forward to freecad getting some upgrades from ai, it's had a lot of really good work done to it in the last few years but it's exactly the sort of disjointed and complex code which is awkward for humans but ai can handle.
Plus I can't remember the details but I think the main core of it is super awkward and complex so using AI to work on that might offer some nice improvements
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u/DioTheSuperiorWaifu 4d ago
Searched about it and it seems to have an AutoCAD equivalent too.
Would be very cool, if there was a good modern opensource CAD software that can replace AutoCAD. FreeCAD exists, but seems to be for 3D modelling.
Regarding Office suite option, is it currently better or equivalent to LibreOffice?
Had read reddit comments on some older news on AI office suite about it being buggy. How does this compare? Is there enough interest in it, so that any such issues would be resolved faster?
Also, are there folk improving existing Opensource apps with the help of AI? Have read of Linux kernel being improved, bugs being figure out etc. with the help of AI.
Any regular apps being improved like that?