Earlier this week Adobe made a surprise move by putting its Creative Suite 2 software, as well as individual programs like Photoshop CS2 and Illustrator CS2, up for download on its website along the corresponding serial numbers. Initially it was believed the company got tired of keeping the activation servers running to support legitimate installs of ~8 year-old software and decided to give it away. But that's only partly true.
Turns out Adobe did retire the activation servers used by CS2 back in December, but when legitimate owners of the suite started complaining that without these servers they'd be unable to reinstall their copies if needed, the company began offering versions of CS2 that didn't need activation.
Adobe later clarified that in order to legally use CS2 users still require a purchased license, and that the move was just meant to assist its existing customers. Yet the download page and serials are still live.
Considering the software is being offered directly from Adobe's servers, we'd say most people probably won't lose sleep at night for grabbing a copy. If anything, having access to an old but still serviceable copy of Photoshop might deter some from pirating the latest CS6 release. Perhaps Adobe feels the same? Curiously after the news broke a new CS2 download page went live without the requirement to provide an Adobe ID.