Adobe Flash Player Cash Grab

[Terry5CAF]

Our company offers a whole suite of business applications built on Flash. For well over a year Adobe has been telling us that they will no longer support the Flash Player. That gave us time to move some but not all of our products to a new platform.

But until December 3rd 2020 Adobe failed to mention that they would force disabling of the Flash Player across all browsers. And not until that time we were told that there is an option, for those of us who still need access to their own Flash content. It seems that Adobe partnered with another company who have the sole rights to run Flash content, presumably in some kind of specialized browser. The catch? A cost of US$25,000 per year!

Adobe did not once mention this during the period when we were told that they would no longer support the Flash Player. I don't mind that they won't support the Flash Player but I do need access to my own Flash content. And, I would guess, so do many, many other users who payed Adobe for the Flash Developer tools. By analogy, this is like Adobe saying that they will no longer support the playing of CDs and that any CDs created with their CD creation tools will no longer be playable either.

This not OK! Several years ago I wondered why Steve Jobs was so angry with Adobe and now suspect that the answer was unresponsive, unscrupulous and greedy management.

We need some way to access our own Flash content and that should be perfectly fine as long as we accept responsibility for our own security. I would like to know what Adobe plans to do about that, other than giving us the middle finger.

thanks,

Terry

[Nancy OShea]

Hi Terry5CAF,

Flash Player was a FREE plugin.  No cash involved.

Ask Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla why they killed Flash Player.

https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/enterprise-end-of-life.html

[Joseph5EC3]

   Did you read the post If so you would see what monies the poster is referencing. I was saying the same in an earlier post. We now need to buy new software or something thanks to adobe

[_maria_]

Enterprise enablement might be an option, until browsers drop support for Flash Player and none load Flash content anymore.   Refer to the Flash Player Admin Guide for more information, specifically pages 28 - 35.

For Flash Player details specific to each browser vendor, please refer to:

• Microsoft Internet Edge and Internet Explorer
• Mozilla Firefox
• Apple Safari - removed support in Safari 14, released Sept 16, 2020
• Google Chrome - removed support in Chrome 88, released Jan 19, 2021

[jeromiec83223024 · Accepted solution]

This mechanism exists.  It's called Enteprise Enablement.  Flash Player will load content that you explicitly allow, but will not load content from the open web.  This allows you to keep your content working (particularly in intranet contexts), while minimizing the attack surface related to malicious banner ads and other untrusted content.

Also, the standalone player is still available, if you just need to play local SWFs. 

You can read more about Enterprise Enablement here (pp.28): 

https://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/flash_player_admin_guide.html

It's important to note that all of the major browsers are dropping support for browser plug-ins.  You'll need to find one that will continue to support it (Safari and Chrome have already dropped plugin support).  The Firefox ESR is probably your best bet for the next few months.

Hope that helps!

Also, just for completeness: 

The original announcement from 2017: 

https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-flash-update/

The consumer FAQ: 

https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/end-of-life.html

The enterprise FAQ: 

https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/enterprise-end-of-life.html