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Comment by michaelbrave | Hacker News Reader

I was actually of the opinion that Adobe for a long timer turned a bit of a blind eye toward piracy because many of the people who learned on it once they became professionals became paying customers. Almost like an unofficial free trial that felt more valuable in a way. They would stamp it out once in a while, but often it felt like until they became dominant that they were barely trying to do much about it.

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Microsoft definitely had this strategy with early versions of Windows and quite a lot of specialist tools that cost thousands of dollars per license seem to have something similar going.

I can attest that when I was living on a few hundred dollars a month as a CS student, I pirated a very early version of the IntelliJ IDE. I don't feel bad about this, especially as I've been responsible for tens of thousands dollars worth of license sales for the same product over the years - if only a full-price version of IntelliJ was available, I'd have stuck with Netbeans/ Eclipse instead.

I mean Jetbrains free offerings are substantial anyway and I think just as effective these days. As soon as I found I needed remote debugging to just work, the money for an Ultimate license for myself was just sensible - I wanted to make sure I had the exact tools I needed at work everytime.

>Microsoft definitely had this strategy with early versions of Windows

I question this, purely because the "Open Letter to Hobbyists" shows Microsoft as pretty hostile basically immediately.

Agreed. Adobe creative suite being integrated in educational settings is exceptional advertising. Get the high school and uni classes using Adobe CS and people will go straight for pirating it instead of looking for alternatives. Same with proprietary OSes, or CAD software. If people learn the skills they need with your product, you’ll have the loop closed; the professional world uses the tools, and the next gen learned on them.

This was also Microsoft's model with pirate versions of their software paving the way for MS to take over the developing world.

I learned all my early MS sysadmin skills on a homelab made up of eBay HP servers/Cisco switches and pirated w2k/sbs2003. It allowed it to gain MCSA and get onto the operations career ladder where my employer had legit licenses.

I would bet good money the same applies to graphics people and Photoshop.

Now they offer github, vscode, typescript, .net core, azure(?) and have a big foothold in webdev ecosystem. And Microsoft knows how to monetize it and is well equipped to pull it off. We see history repeating before our eyes.

Interesting theory, although didn't they still make the DRM more advanced and harder to crack with each release?

They changed it so as to invalidate old cracks. Whether or not it was harder is up for debate.

There were certainly better ways to do DRM at the time (even now) that Adobe was well within their monetary limits and interests pursuing. But of course, it was still cracked.

Also, for a hundred buck fee and some TPB/Demonoid credit, it's almost always worth it to a cracker to go after a flagship product.

There's also the running theory that Adobe was the one to release some of the cracks, namely because new releases of the Creative Suite back when it was new would be cracked nearly "instantly".

It's speculation, but the above theory would make a lot of sense - and, in my opinion, that's exactly what ended up happening, and what made Photoshop the industry leader over a pretty decent selection of alternatives at the time (though admittedly PS had already mostly established itself at the time anyway, but it could have probably been swayed).

I believe all this as well. If they wanted to, Adobe could invest heavily in DRM that would take at least a few months to crack. But it's far cheaper to stick a login wall in front of download pages and support forums, monitor for corporate email addresses, and spend the money on going after companies that pirate their software. e.g. https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7948241/forever-21-pirati...

As late as 2010 one could copy the install folder to any other Windows PC and start a licensed copy, or one that worked the same. That drove maaany people with easy access to a decent (phone) camera to pirate. People my age went hard into the "Facebook Photographer" and a surprising number are still doing well in that area (anecdotal and maybe not so much last year).

I know some of those old friends stuck to Adobe while others looked for open source/free alternatives depending on budget/revenue. I think one even works at/with Adobe these days after trying to hack on more features more than 10 years ago. But it's the same reason Apple/Google want kids using their devices in schools. Train the next gen to want your product and let the marketing flow.

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