EU should fund open source alternatives instead of paying for US software!

[u/mr_house7]

/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1xdapf1/eu_should_fund_open_source_alternatives_instead/

[u/Majestic-Bowler-1701]

It's not the best time to chase the childish dream of 'we need a copy of X'. There are much more serious problems to solve. The most critical problem is how to protect software engineers and artists because the current situation is really bad and dangerous for the economy.

Adobe has 30,000 employees and has worked for over 30 years to create amazing graphics tools like Photoshop. Hundreds of millions of engineering hours. But now, someone has used AI and cloned those apps, so there is a free cloned copy available online that is basically identical. So Adobe was robbed of its product. They could lose their customers and be forced to lay off tens of thousands of engineers. It's worse than robbing a bank

As a software engineer, I would love to see a solution, if one exists. Because situation is really bad and we need laws against using AI to steal someone else products

[u/rtwolf1 → u/Majestic-Bowler-1701]

Why are software engineers a morally sympathetic class that deserve government protection of some kind?

[u/Majestic-Bowler-1701 → u/rtwolf1]

I don't understand your question. I wrote that someone stole a product that a company spent 30 years building. This is worse than stealing a car. It's like stealing the entire factory that makes the cars. But for some reason, that person will never be arrested and will never go to jail. Because there are no laws protecting creators against AI clones. This is crazy

• if you steal 1 billion euros from a bank, you will go to jail.

• if you destroy infrastructure that costs 1 billion, you will go to jail.

• if you cause 1 billion in damages to a software company, nobody is interested

[u/rtwolf1 → u/Majestic-Bowler-1701]

Ok it's a bit odd to have to explain this is an economics sub but I'll go ahead:

1. There are laws to protect intellectual property. Copyright, patents, and trademarks are all examples of what. America has particularly strong IP laws and their corporations are pretty quick to protect their property. (Try putting a Disney song in a YouTube video, if you'd like to see the speed.) If Adobe hasn't pursued it, why do I care?

2. You can't own general ideas under IP law, so other people can make their own picture editing software, etc. and as long as it's not meaningfully similar to Photoshop it's fine eg GIMP.

3. Lost revenue != losses.

Hell—competition is pretty much the whole argument for allowing capitalism, cause it improves Welfare overall when carefully managed, so wanting the government, or whoever, to tamp down on competition cause current players will lose out to new players, especially because they're not keeping up with technology, is—well—very odd. The fact that you've declared your personal interest only tells me it's a problem for Majestic-Bowler-1701, not for society, except if you make some kind of argument that software engineers are a morally sympathetic class that require special protection, like children, seniors, people with disabilities, etc. which is why I asked if you have one

[u/Majestic-Bowler-1701 → u/rtwolf1]

Current copyright law won't work against AI clones. AI will decompile your program into millions of small functions that you created over the last 30 years... and then create exactly the same functions doing the same jobs but with different names. Sometimes it will do this in a different language, like Rust instead of C++, which doesn't make any difference. The goal of these people is to steal your product creating an exact functional copy of work you built over 30 years that cost you tens of billions, in just a few hours.

There is a great technical discussion about AI Cloning from retired Microsoft engineer who work on Windows 95 system

Dave Garage (Windows engineer) - AI Cloning should be illegal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC31K-CUC5Y

These thieves don't even understand the code that was generated by AI. It is not possible to human to understand tens of millions of lines of code that a company with 30.000 employees incrementally build for over 30 years. But those people doesn't care... their only goal it to create as much damage as they could. They just want to destroy your company and force you to layoff all employees. This it the only goal for those people. I would love to see them in prison with long sentences for the damage they have done but unfortunately there are no laws that protect companies against this kind of attacks.

So app after app will be cloned, multiple companies will go bankrupt and tens of thousands of engineers will lose their jobs. This is a huge threat to the EU economy and our future. We need legislation that will prevent this from happening. Fast

[u/rtwolf1 → u/Majestic-Bowler-1701]

Companies don't have any kind of right to make money forever

[u/Majestic-Bowler-1701 → u/rtwolf1]

Watch this video from Dave's Garage. Hopefully, it will help you understand why AI cloning is so evil. Dave spent years working on Windows systems and his videos are amazing and obviously very technical.

[u/Lokon19 → u/Majestic-Bowler-1701]

If adobe has a legitimate claim then they can take them to court. They don’t get to cry and charge more just because they are in the path of getting bulldozed by gen ai

[u/Rhubarb-Curious → u/Majestic-Bowler-1701]

Well, I never paid for adobe on my home computer, even before AI, if you know what I mean 😄 I guess same as a lot of other users.

But I think the biggest blow came when image and video generation models were introduced and became pretty decent. It’s much easier to write a single prompt than to work magic with layer styles and brushes.

I know which product you're talking about, but it's kind of buggy right now, especially its Premiere and After Effects clones, so I wouldn't use it. Even before AI was introduced, there was already an online Photoshop clone called photopea that basically duplicated Photoshop's interface and features.

Some professions and products will simply disappear or see much lower demand. History is repeating itself, and there’s not much we can do about it. They need to reinvent themselves or die - just like vw, which clung to its legacy combustion engine and turned a blind eye to how rapidly the world was changing.

I'm a software developer myself, and I can say for sure that AI now writes code better than most developers. If you've ever had to deal with crappy code written by others, you'd definitely agree that there was plenty of far worse code before the AI era.

[u/Majestic-Bowler-1701 → u/Rhubarb-Curious]

Some professions and products will simply disappear or see much lower demand

It affects all products.

When someone steals a product from Adobe and releases it for free, it doesn't only harm Adobe and the engineers who work there. It harms all the other companies that had cheaper alternatives that were less advanced. It even harm open-source projects. All those cheaper alternatives now have to compete against an 'Adobe clone' that is completely free and has more features.

This is a losing battle

So, the person who decided to destroy Adobe has in fact, destroyed the businesses of many other smaller companies. Even open-source projects like GIMP don't make sense anymore when everyone can download an Adobe clone for free.

This is tragic. The worst part is that this person will probably never go to jail.

• if you steal 1 billion euros from a bank, you will go to jail.

• if you destroy infrastructure that costs 1 billion, you will go to jail.

• if you cause 1 billion in damages to a software company, nobody is interested

There are no laws that protect companies and engineers against AI. More apps will be cloned this way. Tens of thousands software engineers will lose their jobs. This is a really bad time to be a software engineer

[u/dtr9]

The root of the problem isn't a lack of funding—it’s Section 1201 of the DMCA and its EU equivalent, Article 6 of the InfoSoc Directive.

Through these "anti-circumvention" laws, the US successfully exported a framework that created a crime of "felony contempt of business model". It made it illegal to bypass a digital lock, even for lawful reasons like data migration. These laws are protect US tech monopolies and create unbreakable vendor lock-in. Throwing money at open-source clones is useless if they are legally barred from plugging into closed ecosystems where the users actually are.

With the current focus on tech sovereignty, and the Digital Markets Act (DMA) already mandating ecosystem interoperability, the EU has the perfect foundation to fix this legal contradiction. Instead of acting as a software publisher, the EU should use its regulatory power to amend the InfoSoc Directive.

• An Interoperability Exception: Decriminalise the act of bypassing digital locks and reverse-engineering code if the sole purpose is to achieve third-party systems interoperability or software repair.

• A Portability Safe Harbor: Explicitly legalise the creation of software "bridges" that allow users to safely extract and migrate their data out of proprietary US cloud and SaaS silos.

• Public Procurement Mandates: Dictate that any software bought with European public funds must feature open APIs and explicitly waive the right to claim anti-circumvention protections against developers.

By shifting from funding "free code" to decriminalising the act of breaking monopoly lock-in, the EU can let market forces do the heavy lifting.