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ColdFusion 8 Now Available to Students and Educators for Free

September 2, 2008 7:00 AM

Students and teachers now have the power, reach and richness to teach and learn how to build dynamic Web sites and Internet applications more easily with the free availability of Adobe ColdFusion 8. ColdFusion 8 is a powerful development tool that increases teacher and student productivity, integrates with complex enterprise environments, and delivers rich and engaging experiences for users.

Academic institutions are experiencing increasing demands for studentsto develop ColdFusion skills earlier in their education to meet the high workforce demand for rich Internet application developers. Through this free offering, faculty can now easily integrate ColdFusion into their curriculum and enable students to advance their Web application learning more quickly and easily.ColdFusion 8 enables developers to seamlessly integrate their ColdFusion applications with other RIA technologies such as Adobe Flex and AIR (both of which are free to educators), AJAX and PDF. Teachers and students can now use ColdFusion to connect to databases, Web services and any other server-side infrastructure to create Internet applications for learning purposes. Thus, teachers can provide tandem instruction on both the use of ColdFusion and other RIA and enterprise technologies, equipping students to graduate with more well-rounded and comprehensive career skills in building RIAs and enterprise applications.

Availability:

Adobe ColdFusion 8 is now available free for download to eligible students and educators through https://freeriatools.adobe.com/coldfusion.ColdFusion 8 integrates with a broad range of platforms and systems. It's supported on the leading J2EE application servers and natively integrates Java, .Net, Microsoft Exchange Server, web services and more. For more detailed information about ColdFusion 8, visit http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/.

For Frequently Asked Questions, please see the FAQ.

*This free offering of ColdFusion 8 is for learning purposes only and not applicable to educational institutions using ColdFusion in production environments.

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	Hi Kristen, Does this also apply to the UK and Europe? I'm also slightly confused as to how this differs from the current free developer edition. Thanks!
	Posted By John Whish \| 9/2/08 11:00 AM

	Hi yes, it's worldwide. This is a free offer of ColdFusion Enterprise for learning purposes.
	Posted By Kristen Schofield \| 9/2/08 11:04 AM

	Enterprise version w00t! Pity I haven't been a student for over 20 years lol! Hallelujah Adobe for this initiative!
	Posted By Peter Tilbrook \| 9/2/08 12:08 PM

	Enterprise version w00t! Pity I haven't been a student for over 20 years lol! Hallelujah Adobe for this initiative!
	Posted By Peter Tilbrook \| 9/2/08 12:13 PM

	This is very good news Kristen. Thanks!
	Posted By Brad Wood \| 9/2/08 2:06 PM

Yeah, at last! :-) Does "learning purposes only" also include learning how to build a cool app and allowing anyone within the college/uni network to access and use the application? e.g. if someone learns how to build a useful or fun application and other students start using it because it's good, does the site have to be taken down once the app is built and the programmer is no longer learning from this specific app?

Next up, will Abode start *promoting* the FREE developer version for people outside of education who are thinking "shall I learn .NET, PHP, Ruby or ColdFusion"? It would be really useful if the number of restricted IPs can be increased a little, or maybe remove that limitation and limit CF to attaching to a single core only?

Posted By Gary Fenton | 9/2/08 2:15 PM

	Are there any schools that are looking to add ColdFusion to their course catalog?
	Posted By Phillip Senn \| 9/2/08 5:05 PM

	Gary - That's a bit of an edge case. I encourage people to contract us if they run into it and we can address it on a case by case basis. In general if an app moves from being an educational project to a production app, it should accompany a commercial license. The dev edition gets promoted regularly. :) Phillip - yes faculty/educators have requested this.
	Posted By Kristen Schofield \| 9/2/08 8:20 PM

	Congratulations! What a great initiative.
	Posted By Mark Phillips \| 9/2/08 8:55 PM

Gary:

my understanding (as a former teacher wanting free CF for T&L since 2003 and hassling Ben Forta for the same)...

... is that what you're talking about is a "showcase" server - a repository for student projects ...

... which IMHO is perfectly legit.

If the showcase app, however, gets relied apon as part of a business process (ie: an app that ppl can't live without) then, no, the server can't be used for those sort of apps.

and I'd be disappointed if a showcase server wasn't allowed.

Posted By barry.b | 9/3/08 12:34 AM

	Hi Barry, The showcase as you describe it is definitely allowed which is why we didn't limit this offer to students and faculty but also include staff. - Kristen
	Posted By Kristen Schofield \| 9/3/08 12:38 AM

So if a student created an app as part of a project or experiment which later becomes a permanent feature of their intranet or just plain popular with other students then there's a chance it will have to be pulled down if the department can't find the money for the CF license.

If they know that risk exists then wouldn't they think "we can avoid this scenario by getting students to only use .Net or PHP to begin with". Or maybe they'd look at a useful/popular CF app as a new project to convert it to .NET or PHP so they can run it permanently for free. Do you see where I'm coming from?

I'm not associated with any educational establishment so feel free to disregard my concerns, but I'm very keen to see a new generation of CF programmers which needs nurturing while future prospective employees & contractors are in the latter years of education.

Posted By Gary Fenton | 9/3/08 12:41 PM

Flex Builder 3 is available for free as well.
I think the idea is to provide functionality (like cfcharting) that either isn't available elsewhere, or would be too hard to replicate.
Who wants to rewrite an app if it already exists? Especially if it's a Flex or AIR app.
When I look back to the programs I wrote as a student, they might be considered "Hello World" type of programs today.
There is such a vast chasm between what a student turns in for an assignment and a production application.

Adobe has moved in the right direction and is trying not to give away the farm.
Colleges DO spend money. You just have to show them what they want.

So the idea is the same as Apple's: get it into the schools so that when the students graduate, they will specify our product and that's when the payoff will come.

Posted By Phillip Senn | 9/3/08 2:43 PM

@Gary:

"or just plain popular with other students"

man, that's a real edge case, y'know? and sometimes edge cases can be - um - hidden? ignored? denied they exist?

besides, I said "gets relied upon as part of a business process"

business. as in doing business. or business workflows necessary for the institute / school / whatever to continue.

if it gets to the stage where a student's CF project becomes an important part of the place, then no only should it cough for a CF server licence, it should also pay the student for the use of their app/IP.

if a student developes, say, a course search + web enrol application, and if the institution wants to roll it into their business processes (provided they survive the fact it wasn't written for a professional**) then bloody right they should be hosting it on a legit CF server - and if they haven't got one then they'll find the Educational CF pricing is quite reasonable.

however, if they develop, say, their own version of FineTune and it's a big hit with the students, will anyone _really_ care if it one day disappeared (not saying that it should, but if the potential exists)

that's the difference. It's just simple risk management and of course anything that is essential to a business needs to be supported - including correctly licensed software. You could use the same argument for Windows2003 server.

**
1) Q: how many students does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: just one but it may take them up to 5 years to get it right
2) beware students bearing gifts.

Posted By barry.b | 9/3/08 10:41 PM