BUG #5
If you’ve freshly installed Apple Snow Leopard (10.6) and Freehand won’t even open – then this will help you. The new OS can’t handle the older Activation/Registration panel Freehand uses on first launch.

Therefore you need to copy over your Registration file from an older Leopard machine.

1) Open Freehand on Leopard (OS 10.5)
2) Goto > Help > Transfer my licence – Agree
3) Open Freehand again > Activate – And Quit
4) Copy your registration file from /Library/Application Support/Macromedia/ into the equivalent Snow Leopard folder. Open Freehand on Snow Leopard.

If the above doesnt work for you – you’ll need a Volume Licence Serial. (This is not the preferred solution but Adobe has left the Freehand user no option if they do not issue maintenance updates to Freehand)

1) Download this ZIP
2) Copy the registration file to /Library/Application Support/Macromedia/ in Snow Leopard. Open Freehand.