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My understanding is that they wanted to shut down the product activation servers for CS2, so they released an update for it that removed the product activation check (and made the updates available on a publicly accessible web page), so that existing CS2 users could keep using it without things breaking.

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It's not an update. The software is the same as released in 2005. Only the license keys are special keys that make the software bypass the Internet activation.

So why did they make the software downloadable at all and not just the special license keys? The Macromedia Studio MX 2004 suite they acquired uses the same activation servers. In that case they only made special license keys available and not the software.

This smells like a thinly veiled strategy to penetrate the market without saying so (for whatever reason).

I'm with you until your conclusion. Hanlon's razor. I think it's much more likely to be an accident caused by some incompetent support agent. Adobe is very bad at even basic strategy, let alone sneaky strategy.

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