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Adobe Tells Users They Can Get Sued for Using Old Versions of Photoshop (2019)

180 points by ruph123 3y ago

cde-v 3y ago
Good thing Adobe products are so easy to pirate.
- sixothree 3y ago
  Heck I paid for an old version of lightroom and I can't get it to run.
- fnord77 3y ago
  are they? I got the impression that the crackz were filled with malware
  - mavhc 3y ago
    Who gave you that impression?
    - dspillett 3y ago
      A number of commercial entities and relevant advocates have made the claim for years. It is certainly the case that infected copies of commonly pirated software exist, though they are not as common as some would lead us to believe (at least not of you chose your sources carefully… ahem…). For a little anecdata: I know at least one person who has encountered this, having his gaming machine encrypted for ransom after installing a copy of a pirated game (luckily for him the machine had nothing on it aside from the games and some media he had copies of elsewhere, and the attack didn't seem to get hold of any credentials (or if it did, no one tried to use them before he got them updated)). There was also apparently a spate of pirated copies installing crypto miners, though I don't know anyone affected by that, and malware disguised as audio/video files was definitely a thing back in the Napster era. Another place the impression can come from is that some AV tools pick up on parts of the pirated copies as malware even if they aren't. In some cases this will be because they look enough like it (for instance the installer working as usual then patching executables) for heuristics to kick out a false positive), and some claim that commercial products have been paid to include signatures that match common piracy groups' so they get quarantined & warned as malware even though they aren't.
    - garganzol 3y ago
      Actually this is mostly true. Most warez releases are just fake cracks with malware payloads nowadays.
  - bearmode 3y ago
    Why? Adobe products have historically always been incredibly easy to pirate. It was almost an implicit part of their business model back in the day - get the kids and amateurs learning on pirated versions of their software, and when they take it professional they'll buy it. It worked really well. Adobe never really cared about non-pros using pirated versions.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - tstrimple 3y ago
    It's all about where you get your trackers. Public sites which list the software will be a minefield of malware. Private trackers tend to have much lower risk.
    - fnord77 3y ago
      unless there's a way to see exactly what the crack is doing, I wouldn't trust any of them. too much incentive, lots of sophisticated players, not terribly difficult to write something that evades current detection techniques
  - whywhywhywhy 3y ago
    Yeah they're not safe anymore, used to be ways to just get the trial and make it work in a very safe way. Now you have to run some unknown crack while it's in use. Seems a terrible idea considering how often the machines it's running on are powerful so juicy targets. "Just pirate it" isn't sensible advice for this software anymore if you care about your machine and its contents.
FeistySkink 3y ago
I imagine this is a sign of what's coming for everything outside of software as well. Can't wait to not find my car, bicycle or fridge one morning, because the model is no-longer supported and they decide to get themselves repossessed and walked away. Or they just brick themselves.
- dominojab 3y ago
  [dead]
- iKlsR 3y ago
  I remember seeing something here, can't recall if it was satire but it was about some EV manufacturer's future plans where your vehicle would drive itself back to dealer or something if you miss a payment. Auto repo. Edit: Found it https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/3/23624328/ford-self-repossessing-car-patent-connected-car-nightmare https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/3/23624328/ford-self-reposse...
coldcode 3y ago
I could use Photoshop in my art creation, but I refuse to. Affinity Photo is good enough and doesn't cost a lot. I might miss a few features but my life is more pleasant without Adobe.
- pdntspa 3y ago
  I'm quite happy with The GIMP
  - sgc 3y ago
    Due to my past experiences, I have not used it in a while, but I have always hated it (and that is not something I usually feel towards software). Such a terrible UI for a product related to art development is baffling. That said, I understand there is a ton of open source engineering that goes into it, and I have a great respect for the effort.
    - pdntspa 3y ago
      The UI is eh. It is functional and really not all that different from Photoshop, though it lacks a lot of the spit-n-shine polish that PS has. What is your problem with it? Is it too ugly? My complaint is that it takes too much clicking to do a lot of stuff.
  - bearmode 3y ago
    GIMP is atrocious.
  - i_have_an_idea 3y ago
    Same. I'm a time traveller from the year 2152 and I was very happy when GIMP added non-destructive layers last month.
    - prmoustache 3y ago
      It is not like people couldn't create beautiful pictures before those non-destructive layers. People tend to complain about some so called missing features while they were living happily without them when their favorite software didn't have them too.
joseph_grobbles 3y ago
[dead]
trollied 3y ago
2019 article. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19913362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19913362
terran57 3y ago
Another reminder that I'm glad to use Photopea.
- nickzelei 3y ago
  I’d be curious to know what folks generally think of Photopea? As an individual, I love it. But I only use it sporadically for surface level features. I’m not a professional that needs this kind of software on a daily basis. How does it hold up to that? Or does it not?
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
One might be forgiven for believing there to be an implicit offer of indemnity for such software products.
- brookst 3y ago
  Even if there were, that wouldn't prevent some one from suing you. In fact it makes you a more attractive target because you have Adobe's bank account behind you, not just your own.
noman-land 3y ago
Krita has been a very decent Photoshop replacement for my small needs.
- flanked-evergl 3y ago
  I really like Krita, way simpler than GIMP.
- nacs 3y ago
  Krita is the best alternative to Photoshop and it runs on every platform (including Linux). Even trying GIMP over multiple years I could never make sense of it's UI but Krita is a breeze and incredibly powerful.
  - 3836293648 3y ago
    > runs on Linux Krita is literally a KDE app
  - bath_ 3y ago
    Coming from Photoshop (and no longer doing any serious graphic work), I've found https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/ (an in-browser photoshop clone) to be really great for 99.9% of my needs. It's free, has the same UI as photoshop so no re-learning hotkeys, and is browser-based.
- EGreg 3y ago
  Anyone seen photopea.com ?
  - garganzol 3y ago
    Online-based tools rarely gain any professional trust as they can just disappear without a trace one day. Some occasional editing - maybe, putting a trade at the mercy of an online-only solution - never. Another aspect is privacy. Medium- and high-caliber professionals are reluctant to share the innards of their work with anyone.
fredgrott 3y ago
When a large software company puts the warning on their cloud software "You Should not use this in production" you become the idiot and fool if you continue to pay to use it and use it. Adobe became irrelevant years ago due to this BS.
- chefandy 3y ago
  > Adobe became irrelevant years ago due to this BS. Think what you will about Adobe's practices but it seems strange to say they're irrelevant. They're still the industry standard in many industries by leaps and bounds.
  - bitL 3y ago
    DaVinci Resolve is eating their lunch in cinematography, nobody cares about Premiere or AfterEffects anymore.
    - adzm 3y ago
      Are you serious? After Effects can still do a ton that DaVinci cannot. It's awesome that Resolve exists for sure but Adobe is still by far the industry standard.
      - bitL 3y ago
        There are plugins for DaVinci that can obliterate the need to ever touch AE though it's not out of the box.
        adzm 3y ago
        Don't get me wrong I like DaVinci a ton. But for motion graphics After Effects still has an edge. Additionally with things like dynamic linking and integration with Illustrator and etc it's still very much a critical part of a lot of workflows. That said, DaVinci is improving at a very impressive pace. Adobe really just has the benefit of nearly 30 years of an ecosystem around it. I'm actually quite surprised at how stagnant After Effects has become, but perhaps Adobe has some stuff coming down the pipeline.
crazygringo 3y ago
There's no point in posting a 2019 article just to get riled up against Adobe without any updates or more recent developments. If we're going to turn on the outrage machine, let's at least stick to current news. Not something that happened 4 years ago.
- hourago 3y ago
  > let's at least stick to current news So, Adobe will not anymore sue users for using old versions? This is not relevant anymore? Can you provide a link that shows that Adobe retracted of this practice?
  - gammalost 3y ago
    Well for starter it isn't adobe threatening to sue. It's a warning about third parties. And have you heard of this happening in the last four years? I haven't at least.
    - joshmanders 3y ago
      Despite being 4 years old, this is news to me today. So thanks OP for posting it, because some of us don't see everything on the internet on day one, like gammalost here.
      - gammalost 3y ago
        When did I claim that I see everything or that it wasn't new to someone, odd response. I just saw it as a non-issue as Adobe isn't threatening to sue anyone
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hirako2000 3y ago
  I didn't know, and is still relevant so is good news to me. We can't rearsh enough how evil Adobe practices are, they are so evil it is so hard to grasp that even if we knew we need regular remindes. Adobe might be above Microsoft level. See, people have all forgotten about or don't know. Anyone please make MS court cases from the 2000s reach the top 50 list. That would be news for the majority of readers, even hackernews' community.
bearmode 3y ago
>“Please be aware that should you continue to use the discontinued version(s), you may be at risk of potential claims of infringement by third parties.” So Adobe was never planning on suing anybody, but any third-party license agreements may have expired. Such as those with Pantone. Why would this get anybody riled up about Adobe? (also the fact that the article is 4 years old...)
- simion314 3y ago
  >Why would this get anybody riled up about Adobe? I mean is obvious to me, say you sell me some software, and next week you tell me, "hey sucker, I might have used some third party shit that I should not have, you should stop using the stuff or you might be in danger of lawsuits". Something like this happened with some video games where they autoupdated and removed some contentment, this should be illegal, you do not change a deal a few years after , this products should not be sold but say clear "rent for 1,2,3 years" and then maybe people might decide that would be worth it to do something like Blender and finance an open project then getting screwed like this.
  - bearmode 3y ago
    It's just the nature of software license agreements. You say that they used third party shit that they should not have, but why should they not have? The inclusion of Pantone swatches in Adobe products was of huge benefit to users, and therefore Adobe, and also to Pantone themselves.
    - danaris 3y ago
      You're missing the point. The "shouldn't have" in the GP is purely from a legal standpoint. It's not important whether it was a net good to have Pantone integrated into Adobe products. What's important is that Adobe provided something under a certain set of terms, then changed those terms to the detriment of all their users not because of anything the users did, but because of their own failure to get a perpetual license from Pantone from the start.
rpastuszak 3y ago
I don't care much about the Adobe bullshit any more, but after having used Photoshop for almost 20 years, I switched to Affinity last year and I cannot recommend it enough! I use Procreate, Affinity and Figma and all of these tools are cheaper, easier to use, and still support my (often more advanced) use-cases. Same with Lightroom vs. Capture One. PS. If you fell for the same "annual but paid monthly subscription" scam with an early cancellation fee, try changing your payment method to PayPal, and then use it to block the payments.
- reaperducer 3y ago
  I don't care much about the Adobe bullshit any more, but after having used Photoshop for almost 20 years, I switched to Affinity last year and I cannot recommend it enough! Coincidentally, I just finished a session with Affinity Photo 2 before reading your comment. I, too, recommend Affinity Photo as a Photoshop replacement for many people. It's probably good enough for 80% of people out there. I switched to Affinity because I don't do subscription software. But I'm still up to speed with Photoshop because I have to use it at work. Photoshop is still better than Affinity in a lot of ways, and for all the confusion in its interface, it's still more polished than Affinity. One of my biggest problems with Affinity Photo is that it can't save files in the background, which wastes a lot of time when you're working with multiple large images. Worse, though, is that Affinity Photo is just buggy. Affinity Photo 2 is better, but many bugs persist. Things like images loading, but simply not rendering on screen. Or selecting a tool, but the tool has no effect, and you have to quit the program and restart for it to work again. Unfortunately, Affinity's official forum is not what it should be. I'll be polite and call responses from official Affinity people "brusque." Also, be very gentle in your criticism and reporting of bugs, because they're quick to delete even minor complaints. More than once I've been following a discussion where someone is having the same problem as I am, and I get an e-mail notification containing another person's response. By the time I get to the actual forum, it's all been deleted by the admins. Not a good look.
  - Eric_WVGG 3y ago
    Affinity’s forum community is truly bizarre. I posted a feature request for WebP support some years back; for a couple years later, people would regularly reply to chime in that I was an idiot for thinking I needed it. (It’s now available in v2)
blamazon 3y ago
For an old version of photoshop you won't get sued for using[1] - it's vintage software these days but CS2 is available on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/Adobe-CS2 https://archive.org/details/Adobe-CS2 [1]: probably
- sourcecodeplz 3y ago
  Is this really actually free? edit: I've downloaded and installed Photoshop CS2 from the Archive.org link. Activated with the provided key. Works flawlessly on Windows 10. Thanks a lot for this! edit2: "Adobe has not officially released the CS2 software for free. Instead, it has canceled its CS2 license management servers because of a technical glitch, so for those with existing licenses it is now offering downloads that do not require contact with the licensing servers. While Adobe admits this may be seen as it giving its software away for free, this service is intended for those with existing Adobe CS2 licenses."
  - samtheprogram 3y ago
    It is, I have a dedicated PowerPC Mac running old versions of software that are now free to use (including CS 2). Check the Internet Archive or “Macintosh Repository” (Mac only, of course) for other software or downloads. The caveat is that you’ll likely need an old OS to run EOL software.
    - prmoustache 3y ago
      I don't understand. Every once in a while we get a mention about Microsoft being super retro compatible allowing you to run old win32 binaries on even the latest windows and how much better it is to linux with its glibc incompatibilities. And then this, you would need an old OS to run an old Photoshop. So where is the truth?
      - sourcecodeplz 3y ago
        In this case there is no caveat. The truth is: it works just fine on Windows 10. I just installed it.
bitL 3y ago
I still own the CS6 suite, the last one before Adobe went mad with subscriptions. Even back then they tried to switch CS6 users to CC users by accepting some ridiculous license agreement that would lead to losing access to CS6. Adobe became truly horrible when the current CEO took the reins.
- 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
  Its cool how adobe has web scraping robots like bots that scans countless computers in search for adobe software that doesn't have a ongoing subscription. Oh wait. They can't. As a person who doesn't need to do adobe software, I'd pirate their software just out of spite. Let them fight me.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    I guess they don't need bots to scans computers, they have telemetry in the software that send home who is doing what.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
blackoil 3y ago
Is this about old perpetual licences or subscription? Subscription is supposed to work like this, you keep on using it till you pay for it.
- tiahura 3y ago
  Is this about old perpetual licences or subscription? If only there was a way to find out? 29 commenters and it would appear that none of them have read the article.
  - LanceH 3y ago
    I think it assumes knowledge that the subscription is called "Creative Cloud". It is not immediately clear that older pre-subscription versions were not also "Creative Cloud". So, no, the article doesn't explicitly say it's about subscription versions becoming unavailable, even though that's what the article is about. I believe the underlying issue (vaguely mentioned in the article) is that some older versions of some of the Creative Cloud projects had licensed sub-modules which have fallen out of licensing. So continued use of the subscription requires an "upgrade" which might remove needed functionality for some users. Likewise you comment without actually saying whether it is or not.
- Kerrick 3y ago
  It’s about subscription, but not like you think it is. This is about users who started paying the subscription years ago, continued paying the subscription through the present day, but some time between then stopped updating one of the apps because the update would remove a feature. But that version of the app used a third party module that Adobe no longer pays for, so Adobe doesn’t have the right to let the users use it anymore, so Adobe is demanding they stop using the version that includes the module.
theknocker 3y ago
[dead]
SentientAtom 3y ago
The Pirate Bay
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
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garganzol 3y ago
Affinity by Serif: clean, very capable and no subscription BS, so far. If you used to like Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks you will be at home with Affinity Designer. Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Serif/Affinity, just a happy customer.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bentt 3y ago
Anyone know why open source Photoshop replacements dont get traction like Blender has for 3d? Krita is good. Gimp is bad. Nothing seems to be as good as Blender is for 3d, but the problem set is undeniably simpler.
- N1ckFG 3y ago
  It's a matter of resources and time imo. Blender is currently about thirty people and started in 1994; Krita and Gimp are each currently four people and both started in 1998. (Also, 3D graphics turned out to have a Blender-shaped hole--it's arguably the first generalist's creation app--while the 2D painting space has gotten pretty crowded since the 1970s.)
rsync 3y ago
Oh … I have a CD copy of a very early photoshop version for SGI Irix … time to load that up and blog about it ?

180 points by ruph123 3y ago

cde-v 3y ago

Good thing Adobe products are so easy to pirate.

sixothree 3y ago
Heck I paid for an old version of lightroom and I can't get it to run.
fnord77 3y ago
are they? I got the impression that the crackz were filled with malware
- mavhc 3y ago
  Who gave you that impression?
  - dspillett 3y ago
    A number of commercial entities and relevant advocates have made the claim for years. It is certainly the case that infected copies of commonly pirated software exist, though they are not as common as some would lead us to believe (at least not of you chose your sources carefully… ahem…). For a little anecdata: I know at least one person who has encountered this, having his gaming machine encrypted for ransom after installing a copy of a pirated game (luckily for him the machine had nothing on it aside from the games and some media he had copies of elsewhere, and the attack didn't seem to get hold of any credentials (or if it did, no one tried to use them before he got them updated)). There was also apparently a spate of pirated copies installing crypto miners, though I don't know anyone affected by that, and malware disguised as audio/video files was definitely a thing back in the Napster era. Another place the impression can come from is that some AV tools pick up on parts of the pirated copies as malware even if they aren't. In some cases this will be because they look enough like it (for instance the installer working as usual then patching executables) for heuristics to kick out a false positive), and some claim that commercial products have been paid to include signatures that match common piracy groups' so they get quarantined & warned as malware even though they aren't.
  - garganzol 3y ago
    Actually this is mostly true. Most warez releases are just fake cracks with malware payloads nowadays.
- bearmode 3y ago
  Why? Adobe products have historically always been incredibly easy to pirate. It was almost an implicit part of their business model back in the day - get the kids and amateurs learning on pirated versions of their software, and when they take it professional they'll buy it. It worked really well. Adobe never really cared about non-pros using pirated versions.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tstrimple 3y ago
  It's all about where you get your trackers. Public sites which list the software will be a minefield of malware. Private trackers tend to have much lower risk.
  - fnord77 3y ago
    unless there's a way to see exactly what the crack is doing, I wouldn't trust any of them. too much incentive, lots of sophisticated players, not terribly difficult to write something that evades current detection techniques
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  Yeah they're not safe anymore, used to be ways to just get the trial and make it work in a very safe way. Now you have to run some unknown crack while it's in use. Seems a terrible idea considering how often the machines it's running on are powerful so juicy targets. "Just pirate it" isn't sensible advice for this software anymore if you care about your machine and its contents.

FeistySkink 3y ago

I imagine this is a sign of what's coming for everything outside of software as well. Can't wait to not find my car, bicycle or fridge one morning, because the model is no-longer supported and they decide to get themselves repossessed and walked away. Or they just brick themselves.

dominojab 3y ago
[dead]
iKlsR 3y ago
I remember seeing something here, can't recall if it was satire but it was about some EV manufacturer's future plans where your vehicle would drive itself back to dealer or something if you miss a payment. Auto repo. Edit: Found it https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/3/23624328/ford-self-repossessing-car-patent-connected-car-nightmare https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/3/23624328/ford-self-reposse...

coldcode 3y ago

I could use Photoshop in my art creation, but I refuse to. Affinity Photo is good enough and doesn't cost a lot. I might miss a few features but my life is more pleasant without Adobe.

pdntspa 3y ago
I'm quite happy with The GIMP
- sgc 3y ago
  Due to my past experiences, I have not used it in a while, but I have always hated it (and that is not something I usually feel towards software). Such a terrible UI for a product related to art development is baffling. That said, I understand there is a ton of open source engineering that goes into it, and I have a great respect for the effort.
  - pdntspa 3y ago
    The UI is eh. It is functional and really not all that different from Photoshop, though it lacks a lot of the spit-n-shine polish that PS has. What is your problem with it? Is it too ugly? My complaint is that it takes too much clicking to do a lot of stuff.
- bearmode 3y ago
  GIMP is atrocious.
- i_have_an_idea 3y ago
  Same. I'm a time traveller from the year 2152 and I was very happy when GIMP added non-destructive layers last month.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    It is not like people couldn't create beautiful pictures before those non-destructive layers. People tend to complain about some so called missing features while they were living happily without them when their favorite software didn't have them too.

joseph_grobbles 3y ago

[dead]

trollied 3y ago

2019 article. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19913362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19913362

terran57 3y ago

Another reminder that I'm glad to use Photopea.

nickzelei 3y ago
I’d be curious to know what folks generally think of Photopea? As an individual, I love it. But I only use it sporadically for surface level features. I’m not a professional that needs this kind of software on a daily basis. How does it hold up to that? Or does it not?

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

One might be forgiven for believing there to be an implicit offer of indemnity for such software products.

brookst 3y ago
Even if there were, that wouldn't prevent some one from suing you. In fact it makes you a more attractive target because you have Adobe's bank account behind you, not just your own.

noman-land 3y ago

Krita has been a very decent Photoshop replacement for my small needs.

flanked-evergl 3y ago
I really like Krita, way simpler than GIMP.
nacs 3y ago
Krita is the best alternative to Photoshop and it runs on every platform (including Linux). Even trying GIMP over multiple years I could never make sense of it's UI but Krita is a breeze and incredibly powerful.
- 3836293648 3y ago
  > runs on Linux Krita is literally a KDE app
- bath_ 3y ago
  Coming from Photoshop (and no longer doing any serious graphic work), I've found https://www.photopea.com/ https://www.photopea.com/ (an in-browser photoshop clone) to be really great for 99.9% of my needs. It's free, has the same UI as photoshop so no re-learning hotkeys, and is browser-based.
EGreg 3y ago
Anyone seen photopea.com ?
- garganzol 3y ago
  Online-based tools rarely gain any professional trust as they can just disappear without a trace one day. Some occasional editing - maybe, putting a trade at the mercy of an online-only solution - never. Another aspect is privacy. Medium- and high-caliber professionals are reluctant to share the innards of their work with anyone.

fredgrott 3y ago

When a large software company puts the warning on their cloud software "You Should not use this in production" you become the idiot and fool if you continue to pay to use it and use it. Adobe became irrelevant years ago due to this BS.

chefandy 3y ago
> Adobe became irrelevant years ago due to this BS. Think what you will about Adobe's practices but it seems strange to say they're irrelevant. They're still the industry standard in many industries by leaps and bounds.
- bitL 3y ago
  DaVinci Resolve is eating their lunch in cinematography, nobody cares about Premiere or AfterEffects anymore.
  - adzm 3y ago
    Are you serious? After Effects can still do a ton that DaVinci cannot. It's awesome that Resolve exists for sure but Adobe is still by far the industry standard.
    - bitL 3y ago
      There are plugins for DaVinci that can obliterate the need to ever touch AE though it's not out of the box.
      - adzm 3y ago
        Don't get me wrong I like DaVinci a ton. But for motion graphics After Effects still has an edge. Additionally with things like dynamic linking and integration with Illustrator and etc it's still very much a critical part of a lot of workflows. That said, DaVinci is improving at a very impressive pace. Adobe really just has the benefit of nearly 30 years of an ecosystem around it. I'm actually quite surprised at how stagnant After Effects has become, but perhaps Adobe has some stuff coming down the pipeline.

crazygringo 3y ago

There's no point in posting a 2019 article just to get riled up against Adobe without any updates or more recent developments. If we're going to turn on the outrage machine, let's at least stick to current news. Not something that happened 4 years ago.

hourago 3y ago
> let's at least stick to current news So, Adobe will not anymore sue users for using old versions? This is not relevant anymore? Can you provide a link that shows that Adobe retracted of this practice?
- gammalost 3y ago
  Well for starter it isn't adobe threatening to sue. It's a warning about third parties. And have you heard of this happening in the last four years? I haven't at least.
  - joshmanders 3y ago
    Despite being 4 years old, this is news to me today. So thanks OP for posting it, because some of us don't see everything on the internet on day one, like gammalost here.
    - gammalost 3y ago
      When did I claim that I see everything or that it wasn't new to someone, odd response. I just saw it as a non-issue as Adobe isn't threatening to sue anyone
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hirako2000 3y ago
I didn't know, and is still relevant so is good news to me. We can't rearsh enough how evil Adobe practices are, they are so evil it is so hard to grasp that even if we knew we need regular remindes. Adobe might be above Microsoft level. See, people have all forgotten about or don't know. Anyone please make MS court cases from the 2000s reach the top 50 list. That would be news for the majority of readers, even hackernews' community.

bearmode 3y ago

>“Please be aware that should you continue to use the discontinued version(s), you may be at risk of potential claims of infringement by third parties.” So Adobe was never planning on suing anybody, but any third-party license agreements may have expired. Such as those with Pantone. Why would this get anybody riled up about Adobe? (also the fact that the article is 4 years old...)

simion314 3y ago
>Why would this get anybody riled up about Adobe? I mean is obvious to me, say you sell me some software, and next week you tell me, "hey sucker, I might have used some third party shit that I should not have, you should stop using the stuff or you might be in danger of lawsuits". Something like this happened with some video games where they autoupdated and removed some contentment, this should be illegal, you do not change a deal a few years after , this products should not be sold but say clear "rent for 1,2,3 years" and then maybe people might decide that would be worth it to do something like Blender and finance an open project then getting screwed like this.
- bearmode 3y ago
  It's just the nature of software license agreements. You say that they used third party shit that they should not have, but why should they not have? The inclusion of Pantone swatches in Adobe products was of huge benefit to users, and therefore Adobe, and also to Pantone themselves.
  - danaris 3y ago
    You're missing the point. The "shouldn't have" in the GP is purely from a legal standpoint. It's not important whether it was a net good to have Pantone integrated into Adobe products. What's important is that Adobe provided something under a certain set of terms, then changed those terms to the detriment of all their users not because of anything the users did, but because of their own failure to get a perpetual license from Pantone from the start.

rpastuszak 3y ago

I don't care much about the Adobe bullshit any more, but after having used Photoshop for almost 20 years, I switched to Affinity last year and I cannot recommend it enough! I use Procreate, Affinity and Figma and all of these tools are cheaper, easier to use, and still support my (often more advanced) use-cases. Same with Lightroom vs. Capture One. PS. If you fell for the same "annual but paid monthly subscription" scam with an early cancellation fee, try changing your payment method to PayPal, and then use it to block the payments.

reaperducer 3y ago
I don't care much about the Adobe bullshit any more, but after having used Photoshop for almost 20 years, I switched to Affinity last year and I cannot recommend it enough! Coincidentally, I just finished a session with Affinity Photo 2 before reading your comment. I, too, recommend Affinity Photo as a Photoshop replacement for many people. It's probably good enough for 80% of people out there. I switched to Affinity because I don't do subscription software. But I'm still up to speed with Photoshop because I have to use it at work. Photoshop is still better than Affinity in a lot of ways, and for all the confusion in its interface, it's still more polished than Affinity. One of my biggest problems with Affinity Photo is that it can't save files in the background, which wastes a lot of time when you're working with multiple large images. Worse, though, is that Affinity Photo is just buggy. Affinity Photo 2 is better, but many bugs persist. Things like images loading, but simply not rendering on screen. Or selecting a tool, but the tool has no effect, and you have to quit the program and restart for it to work again. Unfortunately, Affinity's official forum is not what it should be. I'll be polite and call responses from official Affinity people "brusque." Also, be very gentle in your criticism and reporting of bugs, because they're quick to delete even minor complaints. More than once I've been following a discussion where someone is having the same problem as I am, and I get an e-mail notification containing another person's response. By the time I get to the actual forum, it's all been deleted by the admins. Not a good look.
- Eric_WVGG 3y ago
  Affinity’s forum community is truly bizarre. I posted a feature request for WebP support some years back; for a couple years later, people would regularly reply to chime in that I was an idiot for thinking I needed it. (It’s now available in v2)

blamazon 3y ago

For an old version of photoshop you won't get sued for using[1] - it's vintage software these days but CS2 is available on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/Adobe-CS2 https://archive.org/details/Adobe-CS2 [1]: probably

sourcecodeplz 3y ago
Is this really actually free? edit: I've downloaded and installed Photoshop CS2 from the Archive.org link. Activated with the provided key. Works flawlessly on Windows 10. Thanks a lot for this! edit2: "Adobe has not officially released the CS2 software for free. Instead, it has canceled its CS2 license management servers because of a technical glitch, so for those with existing licenses it is now offering downloads that do not require contact with the licensing servers. While Adobe admits this may be seen as it giving its software away for free, this service is intended for those with existing Adobe CS2 licenses."
- samtheprogram 3y ago
  It is, I have a dedicated PowerPC Mac running old versions of software that are now free to use (including CS 2). Check the Internet Archive or “Macintosh Repository” (Mac only, of course) for other software or downloads. The caveat is that you’ll likely need an old OS to run EOL software.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    I don't understand. Every once in a while we get a mention about Microsoft being super retro compatible allowing you to run old win32 binaries on even the latest windows and how much better it is to linux with its glibc incompatibilities. And then this, you would need an old OS to run an old Photoshop. So where is the truth?
    - sourcecodeplz 3y ago
      In this case there is no caveat. The truth is: it works just fine on Windows 10. I just installed it.

bitL 3y ago

I still own the CS6 suite, the last one before Adobe went mad with subscriptions. Even back then they tried to switch CS6 users to CC users by accepting some ridiculous license agreement that would lead to losing access to CS6. Adobe became truly horrible when the current CEO took the reins.

2Gkashmiri 3y ago
Its cool how adobe has web scraping robots like bots that scans countless computers in search for adobe software that doesn't have a ongoing subscription. Oh wait. They can't. As a person who doesn't need to do adobe software, I'd pirate their software just out of spite. Let them fight me.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  I guess they don't need bots to scans computers, they have telemetry in the software that send home who is doing what.
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blackoil 3y ago

Is this about old perpetual licences or subscription? Subscription is supposed to work like this, you keep on using it till you pay for it.

tiahura 3y ago
Is this about old perpetual licences or subscription? If only there was a way to find out? 29 commenters and it would appear that none of them have read the article.
- LanceH 3y ago
  I think it assumes knowledge that the subscription is called "Creative Cloud". It is not immediately clear that older pre-subscription versions were not also "Creative Cloud". So, no, the article doesn't explicitly say it's about subscription versions becoming unavailable, even though that's what the article is about. I believe the underlying issue (vaguely mentioned in the article) is that some older versions of some of the Creative Cloud projects had licensed sub-modules which have fallen out of licensing. So continued use of the subscription requires an "upgrade" which might remove needed functionality for some users. Likewise you comment without actually saying whether it is or not.
Kerrick 3y ago
It’s about subscription, but not like you think it is. This is about users who started paying the subscription years ago, continued paying the subscription through the present day, but some time between then stopped updating one of the apps because the update would remove a feature. But that version of the app used a third party module that Adobe no longer pays for, so Adobe doesn’t have the right to let the users use it anymore, so Adobe is demanding they stop using the version that includes the module.

theknocker 3y ago

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SentientAtom 3y ago

The Pirate Bay

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garganzol 3y ago

Affinity by Serif: clean, very capable and no subscription BS, so far. If you used to like Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks you will be at home with Affinity Designer. Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Serif/Affinity, just a happy customer.

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bentt 3y ago

Anyone know why open source Photoshop replacements dont get traction like Blender has for 3d? Krita is good. Gimp is bad. Nothing seems to be as good as Blender is for 3d, but the problem set is undeniably simpler.

N1ckFG 3y ago
It's a matter of resources and time imo. Blender is currently about thirty people and started in 1994; Krita and Gimp are each currently four people and both started in 1998. (Also, 3D graphics turned out to have a Blender-shaped hole--it's arguably the first generalist's creation app--while the 2D painting space has gotten pretty crowded since the 1970s.)

rsync 3y ago

Oh … I have a CD copy of a very early photoshop version for SGI Irix … time to load that up and blog about it ?