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Comment by haunter | Hacker News Reader

I really really wish Flash MX 2004 were made free to download by Adobe. That was one of the greatest piece of software they (well Macromedia) ever released. The format is dead, basically abandonware, they should make it available.

Adobe already released the universal activation keys cause they shutdown the servers but it's still not legal to use if you haven't bought an original copy https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/macromedi...

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> but it's still not legal to use if you haven't bought an original copy

But they no longer sell it anyway? And they don't say any of that on that page. If they really wanted to make sure only those who bought it previously got those keys, they'd require logging in with an account you bought it with to see that page.

I'm not sure how does that work legally. For example you can still download the installer directly from them [0] and it's an universal one. If you don't have a key it works in trial mode, if you do have one you can unlock the full version.

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flash/esd/flashmx2004_tri...

You can download the installer from an Adobe server, and Adobe also provides the key to activate it, with no payment or authentication required. Nowhere does it say you need to have paid for it back when they sold it. In my opinion, this means they're officially giving it away for free. FWIW you could also consider it abandonware because, again, it's not sold any more so you can't pay for it even if you wanted to.

Are you really that worried that Adobe will come after you for illegally using 2004 era software that they've abandoned?

Out of the companies I would be worri d would come after me for software, or even accidentally come after me for something like this busy just follow through because they have whole procedures and teams for this, Abode would be one of those companies. If nothing else, it would be used to justify the search if they went after you and used to claim you did something wrong and cover someone's ass at the company.

Adobe is the developer of one of the most pirated pieces of software on the planet. I wouldn't put it past them to be a little trigger happy. For personal use, I imagine you're pretty safe, but if it's a business, even a single person consultancy, who knows?

What law would be violated if you download software from Adobe and use the activation key they've provided to activate it? That's normally how you get software legally.

I think they wouldn’t do that since they might feel it’s competitive with their current Adobe Animate product.

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