Developer Who Coded Free Adobe Clones Reveals Apps That Will Kill Microsoft Office, Says “There’s No Reason to Save Broken Software”
- Vibe-encoded clones of Word, Excel and PowerPoint have appeared
- They are from the same developer who cloned Adobe applications.
- Developer says other open source software is ‘broken’
The developer who used artificial intelligence tools to clone the Adobe Creative Cloud suite and release the copied versions for free has now done the same with Microsoft Office.
As Tom’s Hardware reports, there are now open source versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint available, all very similar to Microsoft’s applications and all with rebranded names: WordCraft, GridCraft, and DeckCraft, respectively.
These programs do not appear to be as advanced in development as the Adobe clones, but the intention is there, and it will be a serious concern for large software companies that want to protect their products.
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The clones are the work of software engineer Brandon Thomas, who has taken to social media to point out that he has years of coding experience, even if he has been using the anthropic AI Claude to do most of the work on these recent projects.
‘GIMP sucks’
I hate LibreOffice so much. One time it ended with a 40-page essay that I wrote the week it was due, during finals. https://t.co/0yRIhwwtfkOctober 11, 2026
There has also been criticism directed at Thomas for choosing AI ‘vibration coding’ instead of supporting current open source software such as LibreOffice, GIMP and Thunderbird. However, the developer does not seem to be a fan of these projects.
“GIMP sucks,” says Thomas. “It’s always sucked. There’s no reason to save broken software.” He also recently told the story of a bad experience with LibreOffice that “killed a 40-page essay I wrote the week I was due, during finals.”
Reaction on Reddit is divided between those who see this as a positive “game changer” for the software industry and those who say that “no job is safe” from the relentless advance of AI and the increasingly powerful capabilities of these robots and agents.
Other commenters point out that free programs like LibreOffice and Google Docs have been around for years without hurting Microsoft Office sales too much, and wonder if this single developer will be able to keep up with bug fixes and updates.
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