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Adobe Gives Away CS2 Products ?

@ 2013/01/09

Yesterday, Adobe put up a mysterious webpage from which its now seven-year-old CS2 line of products (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, Premiere and others) could be freely downloaded by anyone. The page even included valid serial numbers that will unlock the CS2 apps for anyone who wants to. This strange 'giveaways' page at Adobe.com quickly went viral on the internet after a few tech bloggers reported on it. An Adobe spokesman said initially that the CS2 downloads are for existing owners of Adobe CS2 software only, who may not be able to activate their software anymore, due to the CS2 activation servers having been shut down by Adobe. But the internet at large took this webpage as meaning 'Free Adobe CS2 Software for Everyone,' which was probably not what Adobe had in mind. It seems that at this point, hundreds of thousands of people have downloaded their 'free' CS2 products and installed them, and started using them. So Adobe is in a bit of a PR pinch now because of this — Do you tell all the thousands of people who have downloaded CS2 products in the last 48 hours that 'you cannot use these products without paying us'? Or do you accept that hundreds of thousands of people now have free access to seven year old Adobe CS2 products, and try to encourage some of them to 'upgrade to the new CS6 products'?"

(src: Slashdot)

Comment from Stefan Mileschin @ 2013/01/10

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmke

More info

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...=Google+Reader

In other words, they still give the software away for free since if this was available only for people that have previously bought the software, only those would have received new serials on emails, and they wouldn't have been posted publicly like now.

Comment from jmke @ 2013/01/09

More info

Quote:

Unfortunately, it appears that Adobe wasn't really intending to give out CS2 for everyone. Shortly after news of the apparently free software spread across Twitter on Monday, the download page became unavailable, producing an error instead. Subsequent blog and forum posts indicate that this wasn't an inspired decision to liberate an obsolete but still useful application after all. It was something between a mistake, an error of judgement, and a misunderstanding.

CS2 used a product activation scheme to control licensing. When you install the software, it interrogates an Internet server to ensure that the license key you entered is acceptable. In December, Adobe retired the activation servers used by CS2. This posed a problem for CS2's licensed users, because without the activation servers, they can no longer reinstall the software.

To help these people out, Adobe offered versions of CS2 that didn't need activation. Mere entry of the serial numbers that Adobe put on the download page would suffice. The company says that although it looks like it was giving the software away for free, it in fact wasn't. It was just trying to assist its customers. Adobe says in order to legally use CS2, users still require a purchased license.

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...=Google+Reader

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