I think there are examples of projects getting criticized for not recreating the corposhit. Take GIMP
sure some folks really like it, but there are huge swaths of people who basically just say, "why doesn't it work like Photoshop?!" and get very frustrated with its different approach.
Personally, I like Google Photos
the interface, not the product
so when Immich came along and basically cloned it, I was really happy (I think Immich is fantastic, and at this point calling it a Photos clone is kinda offensive tbh
it's way cool).
Some corposhit just sucks, yeah, but some is actually well thought out
no shame in taking the concept and running with it, IMHO.