Adobe Photoshop Freebie (and other stuff) on Adobe website

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

Adobe have released some older software versions for free. It includes Photoshop. They're mostly CS2 versions, which is about ten years old.

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/index.html

Not much good for the Mac users, as the Mac versions are PowerPC only. Might also be tricky for Windows, since the software is described as for Win XP, but a friend tells me that he has this version of Photoshop running on Windows 8 after changing the default install folders

These are all the CS2 versions (maybe Acrobat is more recent) with serial numbers.

I expect Adobe are having to shift a lot of data...

 

[Ciaran Laval]

It's not supposed to be free, unless Adobe have changed their minds in the last 24 hours, it's only supposed to be for people who have CS2 and need to re-install it. The idea that it was free went viral yesterday but Adobe made a comment that it wasn't a freebie.

[Fenimore Hapmouche]

Yep, see http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2013/01/update-on-cs2-and-acrobat-7-activation-servers.html

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

All I can say is that they chose a strange way of setting things up, with a very well-hidden explanation of what they were doing.

Have they been taking lessons from Linden Labs?

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

That web page I linked to includes the serial numbers, and I cannot reconcile that with the claim that serial numbers were sent direct to customers.. I don't know what to make of it. If it's not what it looks like—not even a need to login to the site—what on earth are they doing?

And: <i>1 -- If you've just installed the software, the Activation dialog box appears automatically.</i>

It didn't for me.

It looks like they haven't really bothered to make a restriction to existing customers clear, and the versions available don't have the Activation element, for good reason.

I expect you can already get the bittorrents.

[Theresa Tennyson]

The phrasing of their reasoning was very odd:

Effective December 13, Adobe disabled the activation server for CS2 products and Acrobat 7 because of a technical glitch. These products were released over 7 years ago and do not run on many modern operating systems. But to ensure that any customers activating those old versions can continue to use their software, we issued a serial number directly to those customers.  While this might be interpreted as Adobe giving away software for free, we did it to help our customers.

Note that they DIDN'T say, "While this might be interpreted as Adobe giving away software for free, BUT IT ISN'T."

[Ciaran Laval]

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

Note that they DIDN'T say, "

While

this might be interpreted as Adobe giving away software for free,

BUT IT ISN'T.

"

---

In a forum thread one of their guys said:

"On behalf of Adobe Systems Incorporated ...

 You have heard wrong! Adobe is absolutely not providing free copies of CS2!

 What is true is that Adobe is terminating the activation servers for CS2 and that for existing licensed users of CS2 who need to reinstall their software, copies of CS2 that don't require activation but do require valid serial numbers are available. (Special serial numbers are provided on the page for each product download.) See <http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1114930>.

 You are only legally entitled to download and install with that serial number if you have a valid license to the product!"

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4974662#4974662

However, initially you needed an Adobe ID to login and download the software, they've changed that now, I think they've basically given up the ghost on this and although they won't admit it's free, they do seem to be basically turning a blind eye to it.