Academic Licenses…Is Adobe Changing it’s policy?

Actually, it has been my understanding that at no time are educational versions to be used for commercial work. The educational versions to learn from not make a living from.

Robert

—
Do not assume that because I didn’t reply to your comments that you are correct or that I am wrong or that I am correct and your are wrong. You can assume that you bore me!

Assuming you are talking about the North American Adobe Educational license, commercial use is permitted with respect to the former Adobe products, but not the former Macromedia products. Unfortunately, the merger has caused a disastrous revision to the knowledgebase, which provides no useful information. Here is what I was able to find.

A general page regarding educational versions of Adobe products would lead one to believe that commercial use is completely unrestricted. (As we see below, this does not appear to be entirely true.) The following Q&A are taken from the Adobe Education Purchasing FAQ <http://www.adobe.com/education/purchasing/faq.html>:

———————————————————— ———-

Student question

"I’m very interested in buying the Education version of Adobe Creative Suite, but first I want to know if the software can be used to produce work for paying customers once I am working in the industry, or do I have to buy a different version of Creative Suite once I’m working in the industry?”

Answer

Good news! You can use Adobe Education software (any title!) to produce commercial/professional paid-for work when you leave school, or even while you are in school. In this regard, Adobe does not limit how student software is used. So students can use it to learn and to make money!

(Of course, students must agree to the terms of the End User Licensing Agreement — which appears during installation — just as every software customer must do.)

Student question

“What happens after I graduate? If a new version comes out that I want to buy, do I have to buy the full new retail version or can I save money and just buy the retail upgrade?”

Answer

You are able to continue to use your Education version serial number when you leave school to upgrade to future commercially priced versions if you want to, rather than having to buy the next “full” version. So you save money now while you are a student, and also after you graduate!

———————————————————— ———-

Also, the EULA for all of the CS2 products < http://www.adobe.com/products/eulas/pdfs/Gen_WWCombinedCS2.p df> does not place any restriction on education version purchasers, other than that they are qualified at the time of entering into the agreement. See ¶ 14.6.

This is apparently not the case for Macromedia branded products. The EULA for these products <http://www.adobe.com/products/eula/tools/> provides, at ¶ 3(f) as follows: "Education Versions may not be used for, or distributed to any party for, any commercial purpose."

This distinction is also made at the Adobe Education Store North America < http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?event=d isplayEduConditions&store=OLS-EDU&NR=0> web site, which states:

———————————————————— ———-

What are the restrictions in using education versions of Adobe products?

A customer may only purchase one copy of any product. Education versions of Former Macromedia products only (Studio 8, Dreamweaver, Flash, etc.) are intended for instructional and administrative purposes only and may not be used for any commercial purpose.

———————————————————— ———-

What Robert said is true for most companies, but not Adobe. To this point commercial use of student versions was allowed. As for the original question, is this going to change? the link Michael copied from is telling: if Adobe were going to maintain this very liberal policy, then you would think that they would move it to the former Macromedia products. But it seems clear at the end of that post that they have not done so.

Thus the answer is, as always, anyone who knows for sure can’t say. But I suspect that we might see a policy change now that all the former Macromedia folk are in the fold.

So being that Dreamweaver is now a member of the suite where does that leave us?

I suspect that the former Macromedia products will get the Adobe license once there are new versions produced by Adobe. As to the suite, the Adobe license seems to cover the whole suite. Bear in mind that from a licensing viewpoint, the entire suite is a single product with a single license. The standalone Macromedia license for Dreamweaver shouldn’t apply to an Adobe suite containing Dreamweaver. But only the EULA accompanying your copy is authoritative.