Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

>
> "Can be downloaded and installed" does not mean "legal".
>

I agree that there might be an ethical question involved here. If the offerings
were pirated software, I would not have considered downloading any of it. (I'm
not into software pirating.) But the facts mitigate against this: Adobe itself
is offering them; there are no *obvious* legal caveats on that page against
doing so (which would have been ever-so-easy to implement, as others have
mentioned); and the download page is still active!  In essence, Adobe is saying,
"Here, take our software, it's free, regardless of what we say otherwise."
Whether or not that was originally intended is really a question for Adobe's
lawyers--and I assume the company has a few ;-) For an old and wise company like
Adobe to make available software downloads that *anyone* can access (and
*without* a pre-paid license), and then say (elsewhere!) that "This software is
only for people who have already paid money to us and who have a previous
license, so don't download it otherwise" is not only a bone-headed mistake but
the height of naivete as well.

Although I personally can't claim to have innocently 'stumbled' onto their
download page, I imagine that others have (or were perhaps simply told by a
friend that Adobe was offering 'free software' with no other explanation.) In
such a case, there is nothing on that page to indicate that the apps are *not*
freely available to everyone.

Perhaps (and I could be stretching the meaning of that word) Adobe has a hidden
agenda for doing this: To 'whet the appetite' of people who don't yet own many
of these applications but who might find them useful enough to buy the latest
and greatest versions. (I'm a good example; many of these apps are new to me,
and I'd like to try them out.) If so, it might actually make good business
sense, IMO.

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