Nobody wants to use Microsoft specifically. But that’s what they’re used to. And that’s what the industry standard is. LibreOffice does not prioritize compatibility with Microsoft Office formats. LibreOffice has tabbed mode which feels a bit more like “home”, but for some reason is missing options on this Ui view.
That’s why people are interested. If it looks exactly like Microsoft Office and is 100% compatible with Microsoft Office formats without having to use a Microsoft product, that is a win. Will it be possible to maintain since it was so heavily vibe coded? That remains to be seen. But let’s not pretend that open source projects are just as good or better in every way. LibreOffice is a lot closer than most, but Gimp is no Photoshop, for example, and after 30 years of waiting, I think it’s safe to say that it’s not gonna be. As much as I respect both LibreOffice and Gimp.
Apparently it looks identical to MS Office, so it isn’t “better” than MS Office or LibreOffice in a functional sense (arguably less so since it’s probably very buggy code)
I wouldn’t say it’s people (normal people would be using MS Office or LibreOffice most likely) excited that it’s LLM generated, though some AI Bros probably are, I imagine some outlets are promoting this to sell whatever the new model is these days. And when there is a lot of news around a topic, it’s covered by more and more people (something about all press is good press here)
The exciting part is using AI to decompile closed-source software, which could potentially enable you to change it and run your own custom version of it.
Imagine, say, doing that with Windows and turning off all the hardcoded telemetry.
are any of these actual decompilations tho? my understanding is that to be a good decomp, it has to compile to the same binary as the original, that’s how you know your decomp is perfect. that’s what the infamous game decomps made before ai (mario 64, devilution, lego island…) did
the ai-generated “decomps” aren’t even in the same language! both the ms office and photoshop ones are in rust!
you could do that before. there was nothing stopping you, including the law.
the fact that the vibe coded versions barely work at all is a testament to the fact that LLMs do not mean this is any easier now. the hard part isn’t decompiling the software.
Does the new one look better or something? Or is it just the fact that it’s AI-written that’s getting people excited?
Nobody wants to use Microsoft specifically. But that’s what they’re used to. And that’s what the industry standard is. LibreOffice does not prioritize compatibility with Microsoft Office formats. LibreOffice has tabbed mode which feels a bit more like “home”, but for some reason is missing options on this Ui view.
That’s why people are interested. If it looks exactly like Microsoft Office and is 100% compatible with Microsoft Office formats without having to use a Microsoft product, that is a win. Will it be possible to maintain since it was so heavily vibe coded? That remains to be seen. But let’s not pretend that open source projects are just as good or better in every way. LibreOffice is a lot closer than most, but Gimp is no Photoshop, for example, and after 30 years of waiting, I think it’s safe to say that it’s not gonna be. As much as I respect both LibreOffice and Gimp.
Apparently it looks identical to MS Office, so it isn’t “better” than MS Office or LibreOffice in a functional sense (arguably less so since it’s probably very buggy code)
I wouldn’t say it’s people (normal people would be using MS Office or LibreOffice most likely) excited that it’s LLM generated, though some AI Bros probably are, I imagine some outlets are promoting this to sell whatever the new model is these days. And when there is a lot of news around a topic, it’s covered by more and more people (something about all press is good press here)
The latter
The exciting part is using AI to decompile closed-source software, which could potentially enable you to change it and run your own custom version of it.
Imagine, say, doing that with Windows and turning off all the hardcoded telemetry.
are any of these actual decompilations tho? my understanding is that to be a good decomp, it has to compile to the same binary as the original, that’s how you know your decomp is perfect. that’s what the infamous game decomps made before ai (mario 64, devilution, lego island…) did
the ai-generated “decomps” aren’t even in the same language! both the ms office and photoshop ones are in rust!
We will also see the same sort of AI bugs in closed source stuff that we’ve seen in open source once AI is able to read compiled code
New security exploits, new security exploits everywhere!
you could do that before. there was nothing stopping you, including the law.
the fact that the vibe coded versions barely work at all is a testament to the fact that LLMs do not mean this is any easier now. the hard part isn’t decompiling the software.
There are already version of debloated windows installs, like Windows X-Lite, btw.