Adobe's security breach undermines their new Creative Cloud licensing model, because Creative Cloud requires an ongoing trust in Adobe in order to continue functioning. A boxed software (or one-off download) model is transactional, requiring less trust. (One can, at least, firewall boxed software to limit potential damage.) Since Creative Cloud is subscription-based, one has to maintain an account with Adobe to keep the software working.

As someone dithering about transitioning from Creative Suite to Creative Cloud, receiving Adobe's letter was a slap in the face.

Given that the breach not only included accounts and credit cards, but also source code, I believe it's reasonable to speculate about potential exploits, including exploits in the Creative Cloud deployment mechanism. Going a little further into paranoia, I wonder if running Creative Cloud is potentially equivalent to running a trojan delivery system. I.e., how do we know Adobe's servers are now secure? Adobe is being cagey about the extent of the breach; the breach may have included internal Adobe credentials that can only be solved by a system-wide nuke-and-pave.

I really want to buy Adobe's new software, but they're making it extremely difficult for me.