TL;DR:
Semple, a multi-disciplinary British artist, promised to build “a brand new suite of world-class design and photography tools, with an uncanny similarity to the tools you’ve been indoctrinated in.”
“There’s a really urgent need for a suite of creative tools for creators that they actually own rather than rent. In a way, this first started when Adobe and Pantone decided to paywall the Pantone colors and I created Freetone — which was a free color plugin so creators could continue to access their palette,” he says.
“I have lawyers, and I’ve taken advice. We have solid plans in place. I would also point out that nobody has seen the final branding and no software that infringes on any of Adobe’s trademarks has been produced,”
“I have successfully challenged IP owned by Tiffany and Co, Pantone, Mattel, and others over the years. I feel we have a good and thorough understanding of where the legal line is and an ability to get as close to that as possible without overstepping it.”
I think he'll just deliver some reskinned FOSS projects at best.
Its one thing to make a color chart, its a whole other thing to make all of Adobe.
Well Stuart Semple is someone who has generally been quite reliable in what he does and a fairly prominent artist, so he presumably understands how the Adobe tools work. He probably doesn't have the technical know-how on how to build it. The article mentions that it's a team of sixteen people right now without the funding presumably.
I mean the worst case is they pick an existing project like gimp, krita, darktable or inkscape and brings in enough features to Adobe parity. That isn't a bad outcome at all.
As it's going to be closed source, the project is worthless
SPEZ)!!