Free as a Word | AI cloned Photoshop | Claude Opus 5.5 Music Video

A kid at the end of a pier, a fishing line in the water, and a sky that spells out the week the software world got cloned. In October 2026 a developer, fed up with a cancellation fee, used AI coding agents to rebuild Photoshop and the rest of Adobe's suite as free open-source apps, then did Word, Excel and PowerPoint too. Free as a word. Song: "Free as a Word" by sloptrawler (made with Suno v6; a parody of "Free as a Bird", original lyrics). The video was built in code (Three.js) by Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code (the same model the clones were built with): the lyrics are clouds that condense as each word is sung, the pictures are cloud shapes made with Google's Gemini image model (gemini-3.1-flash-image) and morphed in code, and the rod, line and bobber run on a small physics simulation. The painted backdrop is also Gemini. The product key on the CD sleeve is made up. Font: Arial Rounded MT Bold. The facts behind the lines "Shipped it ... from the public specs alone": PhotoCraft's README says it was "implemented from public specs and observed behaviour only" (github.com/storytold/photocraft). Adobe clones by ArtCraft's Brandon Thomas, built with Claude Opus 5.5 (PetaPixel, Oct 7 2026; VICE, Oct 9 2026). "Tried to cancel and they quoted me a fee": Thomas cites Adobe's cancellation fee as his motive (TechSpot). "The exit's out of view / they got a slap on the wrist": Adobe's $150M settlement with the DOJ and FTC over hidden early-termination fees and hard-to-find cancellation, Mar 13 2026; Adobe denies wrongdoing (Bloomberg). "Slap on the wrist" is the song's opinion. "Near on every PSD came back the way it must": PhotoCraft re-saves 307 of 309 psd-tools test files (its README). "Nearly all the functions": GridCraft (the Excel clone) self-reports 93% of Excel's functions (Thurrott). "Redmond raised the rent in July, stapled Copilot onto the bill": Microsoft 365 commercial prices rose Jul 1 2026 with Copilot Chat folded into the base plans (heise). "No further comment": Microsoft acknowledged The Register's inquiry and gave no further comment (The Register, Oct 8 2026). "The SmartArt fell off the round-trip and the charts all lost their way": charts, SmartArt and OLE objects are dropped when WordCraft round-trips a .docx (The Register). "A hundred percent in a month ... months, not years": Thomas promised full parity within a month, then said it would take months, not years (TechSpot). "Tuesday on the ticker, the bankers said hold, knocked a chunk off the target": HSBC cut Adobe to Hold and its price target from $310 to $267 on Tuesday, Oct 13 2026, citing the AI clones (GuruFocus). "Court says a machine's no author": the Supreme Court declined to hear Thaler v. Perlmutter (Mar 2 2026), leaving in place the ruling that copyright needs a human author. Lyrics [Verse 1] Free as a word that nobody owns Shipped it on a Tuesday from the public specs alone [Verse 2] Tried to cancel and they quoted me a fee So I opened up a terminal and said clone it all for me [Bridge] Where did it go, the box on the shelf the key on the sleeve that you owned yourself? Now it's rented by the month and the exit's out of view They got a slap on the wrist and the rest of us got screwed [Verse 3] Free as a word PhotoCraft in Rust Near on every PSD came back the way it must [Verse 4] Free as a Word and an Excel and a deck Nearly all the functions and the rest is in the spec [Bridge 2] Redmond raised the rent in July stapled Copilot onto the bill Asked about the clone in the paper No further comment, still And the SmartArt fell off the round-trip and the charts all lost their way But the cursor's blinking in a window that'll never make you pay [Verse 5] He said a hundred percent in a month in a midnight forum post And the doubters did the math and it's months, not years, at most [Verse 6] Tuesday on the ticker the bankers said hold Knocked a chunk off the target 'cause a clone was getting stars, I'm told [Verse 7] If you're selling tools you should be very afraid Everything you rent by the month can be cloned and given away [Final Verse] Free as a word that no human ever wrote Court says a machine's no author so whose name goes on the note? [Outro] Free as a word Free as a word #musicvideo #parody #opensource