My Photoshop CS2 serves me very well and will continue to do so until Gimp catches up.

Me too, especially since CS2 is effectively free now. Adobe shut down the activation servers earlier this year so they actually gave out activation-free CS2 installers AND their serials. It's the only non-douchebaggy thing Adobe has done in recent memory.

Much more likely is that "unauthorized" Java VMs will start to crop up that let the user whitelist applets rather than relying on Oracle's certificate system.

Doesn't OpenJDK already do this? I haven't done Java in years so I'm a bit behind the times.