The creator Ivan is on HN as well, stating that he made almost $1 million in a year with this site. Very inspiring. And of course PhotoPea itself is fantastic, essential for every digital designer.
If he adds support for AI quick sketching (using LCMs), he can leapfrog Photoshop. Other companies have raised $50M for this, but he can absolutely bootstrap it. Especially if webgpu enables it.
It's a free alternative to a relatively expensive and clunky-to-install tool. It's popular, the first result when searching "online photoshop". And it has ads.
With a non-technical demographic, ad-blocker percentage is lower and you can make a lot of revenue.
So why can I not copy an Adobe Photoshop CD then? Do I have to delete some code on it first?
Why are people constantly sued for the likeness of logos? Colours? Text?
Why are open source, from scratch, video games sources of open ended lengths of litigation? But what if they changed the polygon count on all assets? Still free?
Changing the polygons wouldn’t be enough. You would need to change architecture, textures, colors, story lines, game play and any number of things that define a unique work. People work hard to build brands. If they are successful they have the money to defend them from more vectors than most can anticipate.
Everything is a moving window … Many of these questions are answered by big legal cases with lots of money behind them … Or one person that tries it, and test the reasoning against market and law. Such person will incur much risk for potential big reward. You may be interested in reading on Overton’s window. Always be aware of consequences to this type of “efficient” thinking and your intentions for doing so. If you stay within the window the legal cases to date have defined as acceptable you may be ok.
Before attempting such a heist you need to understand many moving pieces of business, law, art, and philosophy. The amount of work it takes to get away with stealing a good idea is far more than creating a new good idea. Often the spoils of “cheating” are short lived. Use your imagination for good and the rewards are long lived.
