Downloading Adobe Ligthroom 6.14

As is typical across the industry, the software license is for usage. Not support, not access. Just the right to use it. The license means you can use it forever, but it doesn’t extend to getting lifetime support. It is no different than buying a car or a refrigerator: You have the right to use it forever, but the companies are under no obligation to provide remedies forever. After a certain number of years they will stop stocking the spare parts.

If you look at the license for almost every commercial software title from almost any company, priced from $5 to $500 and up, most licenses have this type of wording (the quote below is from the current Adobe Terms of Service…

9.1 Unless stated in the Additional Terms, the Services and Software are provided “AS-IS.” To the maximum extent permitted by law, Adobe, its affiliates, and third-party providers (“Covered Parties”) disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including the implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability, and fitness for a particular purpose. The Covered Parties make no commitments about the content within the Services. The Covered Parties further disclaim any warranty that (A) the Services and Software will meet your requirements or will be constantly available, uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free; (B) the results obtained from the use of the Services and Software will be effective, accurate, or reliable; (C) the quality of the Services and Software will meet your expectations; or (D) any errors or defects in the Services and Software will be corrected.

The license is not broken because those are the terms agreed to by both parties, it says they do not warrant that “the software will be…constantly available.” You will see the same legal language in the terms for software by Apple, Microsoft, etc. And in the terms of competing software. Even some free software has those terms, so that a programmer working for free does not have to shoulder the burden of supporting a certain old version forever.

I am sympathetic to the problem, and I know what I am writing is not helpful in getting an installer, but…

…any time you get a disk or download of software that is important, keep an archived copy of it around. If it’s that important, always know how you are going to reinstall it if something goes wrong with the computer, where the installer is, etc. This is the only way to operate under terms like those, which are, as I said, part of almost every software you use. And it is especially important if the software is used for a business where any downtime comes at a high cost. Always have a way to recover.