So Adobe has gotten thousands of dollars of me over years of subscriptions as i've bounced in and out of college over the years... thousands and thousands... I don't inherently regret that for when it's either good or necessary (and it's been more 'necessary' than 'good' the last few years resting on their laurels) and they USED to have this pro-creator attitude of you can use any older version of any of your software if for some reason you need to. Older hardware, retired features, etc. A few years back they've sorta stopped this process... I didn't have to delve into it at the time but I got re-reminded of it while going thru an older archive. Like in Photoshop they used to have tools for manipulating 3d formats on 3d displays/stereoscopic vision - those are totally gone for a few years. Yes those displays are uncommon now, especially new, but not nonexistent or if you already had one. Which didn't matter when you were still allowed to download and use the older versions on your same account. But they stopped allowing that. And it got me thinking/wondering what else they removed... do you have/use older versions of any Adobe software (anything they no longer allow modern downloading of) stuff because of features, or some compatibility it no longer supports maybe, or even something like hardware support if youre on a steam-engine era PC? How do you mitigate the risks of using such stuff/i'm always paranoid about things 'downloaded from the internet' for obvious reasons, I know i've seen some people post some archives, but posted windows 10 ISO's can have md5 checksums in reliable places to verify theyre untampered. I'm not sure how to verify something I might find or see was untampered... esp when many things say like 'disable your antivirus to install' type dodgy instructions.. Do you know of any sites that might be more appropriate for me to discuss something like this too where creators just trying to do a job, but denied the tools to do so due to forced version upgrades and removed features work around the frustrations, similar to how this site helps people work around windows OS abuses? (i'd still like to hunt down related solutions for other software in this class, like theyre used to be 4k editing patches for final cut pro 7, yes thats oldold, but some people in the old workflow and used to all the hotkeys were still editing with that up til very recently when youre used to it and if it ran fine on the archaic laptop why upgrade...)
Your best bet is FOSS or FLOSS or even torrent sites that have archived old apps. There is really no where to talk about this due to the nature of how niche it is and also due to the fact that almost everyone have moved on to SaaS or the above mentioned. UUP Dump exists for W1X if you're paranoid for your own lack of knowledge and willing to learn due to procrastination. Hosting EOL apps also means the caveat of having to offer support in some shape or form which outweighs the cost of just having them there hence why things get removed. It's the same reason the legacy of Windows NT <10 took so long to kill. Corps don't just host EOL apps for sake of some lack of galaxy brained "as is" policy. Sadly you are your own problem for buying into SaaS without giving it a second thought. Just like horse drawn carriages and iceboxes, times change, and you either move on or get left behind.
its crazy they did that but i made it a point to keep an install of the cc version i refuse to pay them over and over
if you have an active licence i think they are online just contact the support team ps. CS6 link are live, just checked