An Open Letter on Being Called a Thief
Someone in my own community wrote a 40-page manifesto calling me an art thief. This is my reply, in the open. Judge for yourself.
Some background, for anyone just walking in.
JigglyPaint is a little retro GIF-drawing app I help build — a fork of Internet Janitor’s MIT-licensed WigglyPaint, with a pile of features added on top: colour, frame animation, saving, a community feed, and so on. It runs on iOS and Android, and there is a free web version at wpaint.fun.
A few days ago, someone in our own Discord — anonymous, clearly an artist, clearly sincere — dropped a 40-plus-page write-up on us: a detailed timeline, architecture diagrams, an “autopsy report.” The charge came in two parts:
- Theft. At launch we seeded our community gallery with artwork pulled from itch.io without the artists’ permission — and, the write-up argues, I present myself as the original author to mislead people.
- Profit. That taking an open-source toy, adding features, and charging for it is, in itself, a kind of evil — and everyone who paid is a victim.
The first charge is fair, and I have owned it: the seeded artwork is gone, every piece. The second, I see very differently.
Rather than argue in fragments across a chat thread, I wrote back — one letter, in the open. Here it is, unedited. The author stays anonymous; that is their right.
To the author of the write-up (and to everyone who might enjoy reading the drama):
First, thank you. I really mean it.
You’ve successfully ruined my holiday (yes, I work a 9-5 job and recently had a brief escape :P) in a little funny but constructive way.
It’s an art piece: 40+ pages with a detailed timeline and autopsy report. This means one thing to me: the App has reached a volume where it gets enough attention from a wider community, and someone is willing to spend a few days and nights defending the copyrights and the original author’s name.
So again, I have to say a genuine thank you: you taught me about the importance of IPs and how artists usually feel about such a tool. (I’m NOT being sarcastic when I say that.) Tons of respect to you as a rare artist with a plain, honest sense of justice — I really do.
Respects
Our Discord had gone quiet and almost dead, and I never expected we’d have lovely drama like this. Ah! Drama! My favorite! I should have created a drama channel instead of having you post in the #General channel — it obviously doesn’t fit the topic, lmao. I really thought it was going to die slowly and become one of those ghost channels most users never come back to, haha.
But I was a bit shocked when I logged in to check the chat history today — and really happy to see it spark a big one like this. (I just couldn’t imagine someone doing this much for creators and works he’s never met.)
It does remind me of the internet spirit: creating and sharing for pure joy or helping others, just like WigglyPaint when Internet-Janitor built it. It’s even rarer that people can turn their ideas into action that actually lands, so it’s another sort of inspiration to me: a talented, passionate artist with both artistic and technical backgrounds can do such a great job writing a write-up like this. It takes real conviction, willpower, and careful analysis to establish the facts, build an argument, and then share it — and yours is beautifully written and well organised.
I will NOT try to guess who you are, either.
Staying anonymous is cool — it protects you, and I totally get that. But I hope we can keep our further conversation as open and public as possible, so the readers can judge and decide for themselves.
Now, to your hostility
There’s a lot of hostility in what you wrote, and I felt it — bitterly.
Trust takes time and effort to build, so before I go any further, I want to be sure I understand what you’re accusing me of, so we can at least start on the same page.
There are two main charges.
Part One — Theft
According to you:
- I pulled artwork from itch.io into the app — art theft, and I did it intentionally.
- I "claim to be the author of WigglyPaint" (your words) and mislead people on purpose — the "I'm dev" line.
- And since I "already profited" from that "theft," I'm standing on the moral low ground: JigglyPaint is no better than the reskin sites — a parasite on the artist community.I’ve never claimed to be the author. What you actually point to is the line “I’m dev” — you read it as a sly way to let people think I’m John. I’m honestly happy to make the relationship clear anywhere you want, any time. The app already does. You screenshotted one cropped line and left the rest of the card out of frame — a textbook way to steer the reader: crop the context, and I look like a villain.
Part Two — Profit
And, according to you:
- Adding features — frame animation, easier coloring, saving, rotation, support for old Android phones, better brushes, import/export, saving your progress, actually helping people learn the tool — and then charging for it, is evil.
- We hid the free version.
- The people who pay — who know JigglyPaint is a WigglyPaint fork — are still "victims," and I'm still evil, whether or not they got what they paid for; and you, on their behalf, have to be offended for them and lead a boycott.
- Building something free on WigglyPaint is fine. The second it costs money, it's evil.Please tell me if I’ve got you right. I’m just trying to build a shared understanding of the points in your write-up before I answer.
For Part One
No dancing. I put community artwork from itch.io into the app without asking the artists. That was wrong. Full stop.
It’s all been removed. And I’m happy to admit it in front of everybody — if you want to keep calling me a “thief,” be my guest. I don’t intend to argue the label, since it’s your doc, your narrative, and I did link those artworks without asking permission.
If a public apology helps, I’ll make one — here, on itch, on X, wherever it should go. But when you paint the behaviour as if I’m out to make a profit by sucking people’s blood and stealing artwork, the dots just don’t connect.
For Part Two
First, on the free version — we didn’t hide it. We say it plainly in our relaunch intro video: wpaint.fun is free, forever, and the paid app is only for people who want to support us, or who prefer a native experience with better adaptation. That part just didn’t make it into your write-up.
About the users. Some people just want to pay. Not because they were forced, tortured, or fooled — but because they want an app.
They don’t want it in web form, opening Safari or some browser. They want it offline. They want the extra features. Or they simply liked the thing and want to help the next version happen.
Treating every one of them as a fooled victim who needs saving is, honestly, a little insulting to the users themselves. I can’t put a gun to their head and make them buy — they can always ask for a refund if they feel offended, like you. And, with respect: if you’d actually spent time in the app, you’d have seen all these changes and new features.
About the money. The paid app is what keeps the free one running.
wpaint.fun and the community servers cost real money; the App Store side pays for them. So a boycott that kills the paid version doesn’t free anyone — it takes the free version down with it. But honestly, if it comes to that — if we quit and the apps go dark — I hope you’ll take the codebase, fork it, and add all the features you want on top. Don’t worry, I won’t even ask you to keep our names on it. That’s exactly what the license is for.
About the idea underneath it — “Free is fine, paid is evil.”
Wow. I won’t laugh at you — I walked that path, I know how it feels. Call me a dark-arts follower or whatever, I don’t care.
There are tons of free software versions online, and people still pay for the packaged ones. You can use WinRAR for free, basically forever, and plenty of people still buy a license. Excalidraw is MIT-licensed and free on the web — and its makers still sell Excalidraw+ on top of it. Half the App Store is paid apps built on open-source cores, plenty of them just polished native wrappers around a free project. Nobody calls those thieves.
Money and love for the work aren’t like water and fire; usually the paid thing is what pays for the free thing’s future. Not to mention we do a one-time purchase and keep adding features to it — yet still get flanked by vigilantes like you: “Look, they made a fortune out of it!!! Remember, they’re thieves!”
What we did deliver — the part you left out
Your write-up made it sound like we stuck a price tag on someone else’s work and called it a day. So here’s an unfinished list (we keep adding to it) of what the paid version actually is — and what those “fooled” users are really getting:
- A 16-color palette — the original is monochrome; Pulupo built the whole color version.
- Frame-by-frame animation — make real animated GIFs, not just a single wiggle.
- Undo / redo, as much as you want — the original has none.
- More brushes, and advanced line settings (wiggle amplitude, latency).
- Save, reload, and keep your edit progress — come back and finish later.
- Import / export your work.
- Runs on old Android phones that choke on the web version.
- Localized (Chinese and more) for people the original never reached.
- A community feed to post and share what you make.
- Works offline, no browser needed.
Maybe none of that is worth a few dollars to you. Fair. But it isn’t nothing, and the people who bought it aren’t fools.
About your analysis
First, honestly: I really liked your diagrams. They’re good — clean, clear, more detailed than some internal docs I’ve paid for. Which is what makes me curious: a few of them map the app’s insides closely enough that I have to ask — did you take the app apart to look inside? I ask because:
- It’s a little funny: that’s a lot of time spent inside an app you dislike this much.
- Taking a paid app apart has its own rules, the same way using someone’s artwork does, and I’d rather we both stayed on the right side of the things we’re each asking the other to respect. Or are you a tech expert who can dismantle all these technical decisions just by giving it a peek?
The part that stays with me
The sites that really do strip John’s name and bury his work under ad banners are anonymous. They answer no emails. They’ll still be up next year. We put our names on it, credit him right there on the drawing screen, keep a free version alive — and answer 46 pages with a letter. The ones who own up are the easy ones to shame. The ones who don’t can’t be shamed at all — or do you believe “thieves are thieves, no matter what they say”?
Where we go from here
Please let me know if I’ve read you right, and we can take the rest one piece at a time. There’s a saying I really do believe: the truth gets clearer the more you argue it out, not murkier.
And yes — organizing people to boycott a commercial fork is your right; you lead here. I also understand that, to you, the moment I touched community art I picked up a stain that doesn’t wash out. I surrender — I won’t try to talk you out of that. People grow up in different families and environments, and it’s wonderful that our life paths differ, so we see the world differently.
But you brought up my GitHub, my profile, my blog — so you could clearly have found plenty more about me if you’d wanted, like LinkedIn or something.
So, let me thank you again for keeping it business-oriented: I’m genuinely glad you kept this about the app, and didn’t aim it at my teammates.
Speaking of my teammates
You did guess one thing right. At the start, SnowDream and Pulupo made the free version. I’m the one who came to them. The whole commercial idea was mine. They’re good, genuine buddies. If you need one villain — a “greedy capitalist,” a “community parasite” — come at me. SssAdmin. Just me. And BTW, when I pitched it, they wanted to keep it free. I’m the bitchy capitalism monkey who drove it along and talked them into charging, because I knew that without it there’d be nothing to fund the next feature.
And after all that — after talking to John, keeping his name on it, getting his okay to rename it JigglyPaint — their stories and accounts get dragged back up again… I believe they shouldn’t have to stand trial for this twice. The slow swap from “WigglyPaint” to “JigglyPaint” in our text is on me too. Not on them.
Marx had a line: capital shows up in the world “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” Not a great look on an App Store page, I know. But it’s still the most productive engine we’ve figured out how to run. I honestly thought about going donation-only. But wpaint.fun is already free, and we still get lumped in with the reskin farms just for also shipping a decent iOS build — so I’ve made my peace with playing the villain when a story needs one.
Yet, I just don’t think everyone in the room is as sure about that casting as you are.
Since you’ve already got my GitHub open
You called me an “AI bro” and pinned my GitHub up for the whole room. I won’t pretend I don’t build with the tools of my era, guilty as charged :P. AI never replace vivid drawings like what we have with bare hands. BTW, before you ask, I am writing this with my own hands rather than pure AI because it gives more sense and warmth of a human, rather than slops that people can easily/gradually tell.
But since you’ve already opened the tab, let me give everyone the full tour — including the parts your write-up didn’t mention.
Almost every feature in every one of these is free. A couple show a small ad — the kind that barely covers a domain renewal, let alone my time. So before the room decides I’m a petty leech who only knows how to skim off other people’s work, here’s what I actually make. Go click around; judge for yourself.
(And yes — this is also me shamelessly advertising. You handed me a stage in front of the whole community to prove who I really am. It would be rude not to use it wisely. ;)
- relationmap.io — Map how anything connects to anything: characters, suspects, org charts, your hopelessly tangled group chat. Infinite canvas, no ads, free. You only pay if you want the advanced features or non-CC assets.
- globalrank.ing — Ever wondered where you’d land if the whole planet lined up by net worth? This tells you. Still early, barely any traffic — you’d be a genuinely exclusive visitor.
- lipcolorfinder.com — Track down the exact lipstick shade you’re hunting for. Built by a programmer who learned “coral” is not “brick” the hard way; if you’ve got female friends, send me their notes.
- top-trending.app — Google Trends and other hot searches, live on your iOS home screen, auto-refreshing, auto-updates. For people who like to know what the world’s talking about before it gets around to telling them.
- Fly Kiss — Instant Love Message — Two people opt in to each other; after that, one tap fires an instant notification — a little “kiss” — straight to their phone. Both sides agreed, so send as many as you like. Consensual, silly, and weirdly sweet.
- bigmacmindex.app — Purchasing power across countries, explained through the price of a Big Mac. Free, no ads — economics shouldn’t cost you a burger.
- Always On Top — PDF, Web & Images — Pin any PDF, web page, or image so it floats above everything else, and scribble notes right on top of it. For anyone tired of alt-tabbing their life away.
- Image compressor — Squeeze a pile of images into one tidy zip or PDF. Free, donation-funded, no dark patterns. The link is my developer page — where the rest of the little workshop lives too. I made less than 20 AUD from donations on this one, and gave up adding the features people asked for.
And there’s plenty more I haven’t listed here. To the onlookers reading along — if any of this is your kind of thing, I write about what I’m building over at kunlun.co. Come follow along.
That’s the workshop. Some of it’s useful, some of it’s frankly silly, one of them sends little “kisses” to people who actually asked for them. None of it is stolen. I build things — sometimes well, sometimes at a loss, sometimes making stupid mistakes (like the one you caught, the “thief” one). I guess that’s because I believe I can contribute to the world by making something fun, rather than arguing about “free is good, charging is bad.” And… that’s the guy behind the “AI bro” label you were looking for.
A few last things
- I’m not deleting your Discord posts. You chose to speak, anonymously, on behalf of artists, and I respect that. Again — the truth only gets clearer the more it’s discussed, so let’s discuss it in the open.
- You call me an art thief. I’d say it’s weak copyright instincts on my part — and every piece of that artwork is already gone, exactly as you asked.
- Whatever else you want fixed, I’m listening.
P.S. — When I was younger I had the exact same clean instinct you have; trust me, I believed every paywall and every bit of monetization was evil. So getting lumped in with the reskin farms while running an honest fork is a strange thing to sit with.
Maybe you just think a one-time-purchase app isn’t worth the price.
That’s fair — and I am pretty sure one day I’ll make something original enough to change your mind. We’re still learning (yes, including those reposts you found under the SssAdmin name on itch.io). Let us finish cleaning up our mistakes and do better.
And I’m happy to be labelled the copy-cat thief in front of the whole community — the villain of the story.
It reminds me that villains, too, are made of flesh and blood, not impeccable immortals — and somehow that’s more touching than any flawless deity. 侠客行.
Sincerely, SssAdmin
Afterword
It has been a strange few days.
Since I sent that letter, we have done the cleaning I promised. The seeded artwork is gone — every piece. And we have started the bigger, slower job: redrawing everything in the app by hand, so that every last piece of it is ours.
The first thing to turn original was our mascot — a cozy, perpetually-itchy little rabbit that never quite opens its eyes. Not because it can’t. Because it is lazy, and it has made its peace with the world.
More to come. If any of this is your kind of thing, stick around.
— SssAdmin