Macromedia Studio MX 2004 has an unacceptable anti-piracy mechanism, which writes hidden files into system directories such as

/etc
/var/db
/var/db/netinfo
/.Trashes

and many others. These files then get modified, deleted and moved around every time you launch a Macromedia app.

The big problem is that these directories are writable only by root, which means that Macromedia apps have to run as the superuser to do their mucking around on these files. So they probably need to be installed as setuid root, which is really bad from a security point of view. Ask any UNIX expert around you.

It's OK to use some anti piracy mechanism involving hidden files, but it is not OK to do so in a way that requires root privileges or modifying directories that are crucial to the rest of the system's operation (/etc, /var/db/..., etc).

And their installer is THE worst I have seen. I could never get Fireworks to launch. Why don't they simply user Apple's package mechanism, which is certainly not perfect but works ?