Adobe let you download CS2 for free, kinda

[seremtan]

http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... content%29

not sure if this is by accident or a sort of sly under-the-table way of letting people get hold of their old versions for zero $$$ without just coming out and saying so. i'm going to assume they can't be dumb enough to leave the download page open to all and sundry (and with a thread on p1 of reddit about it) by accident, so the best explanation is probably 'business strategic ambiguity' (i.e. they want people to get into CS for the sake of future sales and free copy helps that along BUT want to cover themselves legally regarding 3rd party license issues)

protip: use noscript to avoid getting diverted to the CS6 page

[Doombrain]

I get CS for free anyway. u mad?

[xer0s]

Is this one of those "You can have it, but you can't save anything" tricks?

[4days]

nope, the article explains it.

worth grabbing if only for those random tech support calls from friends/family who want photoshop but not enough to buy it, especially when it means you don't have to support the cracked copy that they downloaded from riddledwithviruses.com

[Tsakali]

a bit off topic, but dreamweaver CS6 is the buggiest most bloated POS I've ever used. I only really use it so i can work live on my files, and it just so happens that the FTP part of it is what's really fucked up.

Photoshop seems nice though.

[LawL]

I get CS for free anyway. u mad?

Wow!

[seremtan]

Is this one of those "You can have it, but you can't save anything" tricks?

is this one of those dumb "didn't bother to read the article before posting" xer0s posts?

yes. yes it is

[Tsakali]

there's

[Transient]

theirs

[Tsakali]

than

[obsidian]

95% of Mac users are screwed since CS2 for OS X only runs on PowerPC's. Good news if you're running a Pentium III, though.

This is semi-legal for the reason that it's not really freeware so they can stop people distributing it if they wanted to, and it's not commercial unless you actually purchased a license so they don't have to provide support for it. There's probably all sorts of other legalese in there somewhere, but good move for Adobe.

[Eraser]

I think people misunderstand this thing. The fact that you can download the software from Adobe's site without the requirement of any licensing keys or something like that doesn't mean you are actually licensed to use the software.

In other words, there's no difference between grabbing a copy from The Pirate Bay or downloading from Adobe's site.

[MKJ]

indeed, its no different than acquiring some ftp access to Adobe and downloading the software from there; i.e. it was a leak in the site and has been patches up. nothing free or legal about it.

[seremtan]

^ someone else who didn't read the article (properly). it hasn't been "patched up"; the download page is still there, and the "leak" was in fact made larger since it was discovered - by Adobe!

it's like i said: a likely a trade-off between (as Obs put it) a "good move for Adobe", and the potential legal minefield of releasing software with 3rd-party code in it for free

[plained]

Wicked thx for the heads up