Adobe licensing compliance goes online

The new campaign will focus on ensuring businesses with registered Adobe programs, either shrink-wrapped or as part of transactional or contract licensing, have the appropriately licensed number of users per site. Businesses will be asked to nominate a responsible person within their organization to verify the information on a security website.

Adobe will issue certificates of compliance to all those companies who have the correct number of licenses and will provide help to those who do not. If you receive a request to participate in the compliance programme, but choose to ignore it, Adobe says it reserves the right to take any further follow up action as may be required … through the various appropriate agencies.

However Craig Tegel, managing director Adobe, Asia Pacific, is at pains to distance the move from any perception of a software witch hunt. “This is a positive experience for the customer as well as for Adobe. It will help organizations find out what programs they have on their network, and provide them with an asset management system, which can only help,” he said. “It’s a self assessment program, which is friendly and helpful. We’re not coming bursting in the door demanding to know what you’ve got.”

Adobe is the largest supplier of graphic arts software products with such industry standards as PhotoShop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Acrobat. It is also the largest supplier of fonts. The company has enlisted the help of SSAMM , a company specializing in IT, legal and software asset management issues, to run the compliance programme.