4 ms·

I'm not sure how I feel about this. There's a part of me that's saying that I don't need to continue to pirate Photoshop/Fireworks (I'm not a designer, but I d

by joshmn 14y ago

I'm not sure how I feel about this. There's a part of me that's saying that I don't need to continue to pirate Photoshop/Fireworks (I'm not a designer, but I do handle some graphic content for our company), and the other part of me is saying I should still go pirate Photoshop 7 (super lightweight compared to any other PS version.) And, what I mean by that is, not everyone needs to upgrade every version. What happens when shit hits the fan with a version of Photoshop and all the CC customers are forced to upgrade?

nwh 14y ago
The copy protection Adobe currently uses in Photoshop is almost non existant, and I can't imagine the CC suite will be any different. It seems to be more of a token effort to prevent easy piracy than any real attempt. The whole Creative Cloud nonsense is just a way to get people paying subscriptions. None of the "cloud" features are at all usable or useful in any design workflow that I've seen. I attempted to use them on the release of CS6, and there's just nothing there. I would love to see even one person using their 20GB of "cloud storage".
canthonytucci 14y ago
You never "need" to pirate software. If you're too cheap/poor to buy Photoshop, use GIMP. Grow up.
- joshmn 14y ago
  Let me go tell 12-year-old me that.
  - wcfields 14y ago
    Exactly. I always thought that part of Adobes dominance in this market was to allow some piracy of their product because that's how teenagers learned how to use it. Adobe then made their money from actual business users who MAKE money from the tools and therefor must have legit licenses. And those businesses use Adobe because their workforce learned it already, and it became the defacto-standard because of that.
    - andyhmltn 14y ago
      Also: Some of those teenagers will grow up and eventually purchased the product. I (allegedly) pirated Dreamweaver (haha), Flash and Photoshop when I was still learning because I was broke (unless you count £10 a month pocket money as steady income...) After spending a lot of time with those tools, I eventually purchased CS3 and have upgraded to both CS4 and CS6 since then. Not to mention the various licenses I've had to buy for employment.
- kevingadd 14y ago
  He just described a scenario where he needs to pirate PS 7.0 because Adobe doesn't offer it anymore and modern versions are inferior. Unless GIMP somehow covers all his use cases and can read his PSD files without problems? Unless it's changed since I used it last week, that's false. Basically, there are scenarios where legit customers are stuck pirating. I own licenses for multiple pieces of software that I can now only acquire through torrents because the original vendor doesn't offer the installers anymore (or wants to force you to paid upgrade to a newer version).
  - canthonytucci 14y ago
    Do you think he has a license to PS 7.0 and is going to "pirate" it by finding an installer from an alternate source? I did not get that impression. You're not stuck pirating, you're stuck unable to use the software. The choices are pay for software or use FOSS, you're doing both communities a disservice by pirating.
    - kevingadd 14y ago
      Doing that is piracy, though. Which is my point.
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spartango 14y ago
You probably already realize this, but pirating software and using it for commercial purposes is generally a terrible idea. Morals and ethics aside, your piracy exposes your company to legal threats, which could be costly and painful to your colleagues.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I wonder how often companies are actually charged with this though? How would they get proof that you had an old pirate version of PS on a PC in the office somewhere, it's not like adobe has the right to come in and start rummaging around.

by joshmn 14y ago

nwh 14y ago

The copy protection Adobe currently uses in Photoshop is almost non existant, and I can't imagine the CC suite will be any different. It seems to be more of a token effort to prevent easy piracy than any real attempt. The whole Creative Cloud nonsense is just a way to get people paying subscriptions. None of the "cloud" features are at all usable or useful in any design workflow that I've seen. I attempted to use them on the release of CS6, and there's just nothing there. I would love to see even one person using their 20GB of "cloud storage".

canthonytucci 14y ago

You never "need" to pirate software. If you're too cheap/poor to buy Photoshop, use GIMP. Grow up.

joshmn 14y ago
Let me go tell 12-year-old me that.
- wcfields 14y ago
  Exactly. I always thought that part of Adobes dominance in this market was to allow some piracy of their product because that's how teenagers learned how to use it. Adobe then made their money from actual business users who MAKE money from the tools and therefor must have legit licenses. And those businesses use Adobe because their workforce learned it already, and it became the defacto-standard because of that.
  - andyhmltn 14y ago
    Also: Some of those teenagers will grow up and eventually purchased the product. I (allegedly) pirated Dreamweaver (haha), Flash and Photoshop when I was still learning because I was broke (unless you count £10 a month pocket money as steady income...) After spending a lot of time with those tools, I eventually purchased CS3 and have upgraded to both CS4 and CS6 since then. Not to mention the various licenses I've had to buy for employment.
kevingadd 14y ago
He just described a scenario where he needs to pirate PS 7.0 because Adobe doesn't offer it anymore and modern versions are inferior. Unless GIMP somehow covers all his use cases and can read his PSD files without problems? Unless it's changed since I used it last week, that's false. Basically, there are scenarios where legit customers are stuck pirating. I own licenses for multiple pieces of software that I can now only acquire through torrents because the original vendor doesn't offer the installers anymore (or wants to force you to paid upgrade to a newer version).
- canthonytucci 14y ago
  Do you think he has a license to PS 7.0 and is going to "pirate" it by finding an installer from an alternate source? I did not get that impression. You're not stuck pirating, you're stuck unable to use the software. The choices are pay for software or use FOSS, you're doing both communities a disservice by pirating.
  - kevingadd 14y ago
    Doing that is piracy, though. Which is my point.
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spartango 14y ago

You probably already realize this, but pirating software and using it for commercial purposes is generally a terrible idea. Morals and ethics aside, your piracy exposes your company to legal threats, which could be costly and painful to your colleagues.

jiggy2011 14y ago
I wonder how often companies are actually charged with this though? How would they get proof that you had an old pirate version of PS on a PC in the office somewhere, it's not like adobe has the right to come in and start rummaging around.