6 ms·

What the hell is a pirated version of flash? Isn’t flash free? Can you even pirate a free software?

• cpeterso 6y ago
  The company had to install an older version of Flash that didn't include the 2021 "time bomb". Adobe no longer hosts the Flash installers on their website, so the company had to download a copy of Flash from some random website. I'm surprised the time bomb affected them. Adobe publishes a separate build of Flash for China, which doesn't have the time bomb and will continue to be supported until at least 2023. And even if they are using the non-China version of Flash, they didn't need to install a "pirated" version. The Flash time bomb can be disabled for individual websites using Flash's enterprise management features. This is documented on Adobe's website. They would still need to find a browser that will load the plugin. Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and Safari no longer even load the plugin. The Firefox ESR branch (Extended Support Release intended for enterprises) is based on Firefox 78 and still loads the Flash plugin. Firefox 78 ESR will continue to receive security patches (for Firefox, not Flash!) until 2021 Q3.
• banana_giraffe 6y ago
  More than that, the IM conversation in the screenshot mentions downloading Flash 29, a version you can still download from adobe.com (granted, finding the link is a fun bit of searching). Odd story.
• berrynice 6y ago
  Piracy is copying without permission, since Flash is in fact not free software (it costs nothing but it's not 'free' in what you can do with it) you can in fact pirate it by sharing it yourself as opposed to being someone who has gotten permission from Macromedia/Adobe. This is of course absurd, but it's what copyright law entails.