Adobe software without Pantone

That is my problem! 🙂 I don't know how to contact the right person at Adobe. Can you help?

Pantone is offering the Pantone Connect extension with a premium subscription mode, and a free basic mode, which their FAQ states will let you search, pick, and add colors to the swatches panel. However, currently the free Basic mode isn’t allowing me to add swatches or access values—it was a few months ago. Not sure if that‘s a bug in the extension or a misleading FAQ:

They don’t seem to be trying to claim copyright on swatch sharing—documents with existing Pantone swatches will surely open in future versions—if Adobe dropped .acb library access it would be a major problem. Here is an archived Pantone page on usage:

https://web.archive.org/web/20201019160230/https://www.pantone.com/customer-service/help/?t=Sharing-Libraries-from-PANTONE-Color-Manager-with-Workgroup

There is no need to panic. You don't need the Pantone swatch libraries to use Pantone colors in the software. 

If you are actually printing a spot color, you can either "eyeball" the color on screen or use the Pantone solid color guide--just be sure to specify it as a spot color. The swatch simply makes it easier to see the color on screen (the preview accuracy really depends on one's monitor) and proof--but it does not affect the actual printing.

If you are using it for on-screen projects, you can either "eyeball" the color or use the Pantone Color Bridge guide--it has the RGB and Hex colors listed for many spot colors.

If you are using CMYK colors, you should use a CMYK-only guide (Pantone makes one, as do other companies). If you are trying to match a Pantone color in CMYK, then the Color Bridge guide is useful. 

For freelance work, many companies provide their company colors in numerous formats, including Pantone number, CMYK, RGB, and Hex. 

So in the end, I might need the printed guides, but I don't really need the supplied swatch libraries.

An example of the Pantone Color Bridge guide:

The Pantone system is not built in to the Adobe apps, the Swatches are in.acb files which are located in the application presets folder—it’s similar to a font or plugin. To continue using the existing Pantone libraries in future versions it should be just a matter of saving a copy of the .acb files and manually installing them yourself.