They're building a free, open-source Adobe Creative Suite alternative entirely in Rust. It runs super fast with minimal overhead, works completely offline, and aims for near 1:1 feature parity with Adobe products like Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and After Effects. It also supports command-based actions, making it easy to integrate into AI agents and automated workflows. They have Microsoft Office alternatives too.
Their Photoshop clone, PhotoCraft (https://github.com/storytold/photocraft), has around 47k GitHub stars right now.
Does this law apply retroactively?
You wouldn't have a claim under the "straightforward cancellation process" part–same way this law doesn't enable one to walk away from a long-term lease for shits and giggles. But you may under the "clearly explain subscription terms to you" bit.
It's worse than that. They don't even offer a monthly subscription contract - it's purely annual, but they advertise and promote monthly with fine print.
https://www.theverge.com/tech/894555/adobe-75-million-doj-se...
I've been using Claude in what I call iKaren mode. Basically, all the little complaints where I know I'm in the right against a large corporate other but don't want to get emotionally invested into a petty dispute go to it.
I recently had a room in Milan where they were rude at the rooftop–I was ignored after being seated for thirty minutes–and then refused to enable A/C (which they could do remotely) until I called twice, finally yielding at 1AM. I had a terrible night's rest and, resultantly, difficult day of travel the next day. It was a single night at an expensive hotel–I'd ordinarily ignore it.
This time, I passed my booking details and a short blurb to Claude. Between the flight and ferry to my next destination, it negotiated first, a night's free stay (which I rejected) and then a 25% reïmbursement.
(Granted, OP might be imagining that one can replicate everything one does with Adobe's software with an image-generating AI. Which one might be able to. But it's not going to be cost competitive with anything Adobe offers for at least half a decade given current power- and chip-buildout schedules.)
I never used to bother with asking for discounts and refunds because of the hassle. Now when Instacart delivers crappy produce or the heat press controller tracks to a different temp than a thermometer shows, I just have Claude deal with opening, tracking, responding to support.
I don't believe Photoshop/Lightroom will be replaced until I see actually exodus from these products.
Most people aren't well versed in reading T&Cs and whilst LLMs won't do a perfect job, they would likely do a decent job at assessing and highlighting potentially unfriendly clauses such as this.
You're being downvoted, perhaps, for throwing out a generic (albeit literal) deus ex machina. I flagged for the "comment[ing] about the voting on comments" [1]. Happy to undo if fixed.
All I can think of reading this is that bit from Futurama when Bender goes: AHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHA. Oh wait you're serious. Let me laugh even harder.
Yeah we've had near four decades of massive expansion of software, free and not, and AI is definitely what's going to finally make it so companies can't be user hostile. That was what we were missing. 100%.
We can do so much good by just looking up instead of down. We can make the world better.
Gesturing at LLMs and going “this and the free market will fix it” is laughably naive, especially in 2026. That is why people are reacting harshly. This is a problem that was created by the free market, it’s not magically going to be fixed by some new product.
FWIW GP, I'm not bitter. I just know what won't fix this and cosigning this comment, it's more free sodding markets and more new products.
You want companies to act user-first? Cool. Make it fuckin illegal for em to NOT do that, and watch it happen. I see no percentage in it for anyone, apart from the worst people in our industry, permitting companies to have the option to act unethically. I don't think that adds value for anyone.
They should for sure list the annual price and the monthly price but it's not "burried".
If I see: "Annual Subscription - $120/year, billed $10/month" I assume I'm paying $120 even if I cancel after 6 months.
But, if I cancel after 6 months, and the message to me is "$60 cancellation fee", I'm very confused - I thought I was paying the remaining $60 I owe them...? The amount may be the same but it's confusing nonetheless.
The messaging has usually been something like: "Annual subscription cancelled at the end of current period. Access ends on 12/31/2026" (even if today is 6/1/2026)
That's why the "cancellation fee" comment is weird to me - there's no need to message that way, since "pay the rest of the committed period" seems to be a common (and at least to me, very understandable) way to handle this.
Even with monthly services, I don't think I've ever had an immediate loss of access - it's there until the end of the billing cycle. As it should be, IMO. The only exception would be if I force-deleted my account as well as that's a very explicit "I'm done-done" signal to the service provider.
>Fee applies of half your remaining annual commitment if you cancel after Nov 01
and for the prepaid option
>No refund if you cancel after Nov 01
https://www.adobe.com/#mini-plans-web-cta-creative-cloud-car...
Buried prices are the next frontier of consumer protection. I've gotten burned by looking up a store product online and then when attempting to purchase finding that unless you ordered it through the site for in-store pickup, you get a higher price. Car dealerships were the same the last time I bought one. And while I appreciate Tesla's challenge in expressing TCO, subtracting average fuel costs from the price of a car smells bad in the same way.