Red Gate .NET Reflector 8.2.0.7
Shay Silvertooth
That brings us up to speed. For some fascinating reading, check out the Red-Gate Reflector Forum. I'm being serious here. It isn't often that you get to see so many diverse thoughts, opinions, and expressions of outrage in one place. ANY marketing person, product manager, executive, or entrepreneur would be wise to read the forum posts and comments for a mixture of warnings, lessons, and insight into the community/customer mind.
For my part, I don't have a strong opinion about whether Red-Gate is right or wrong on this matter and that's actually not what this post is about. This post (like many other posts) is about behavior and action. While I can't make Reflector free for everyone, I figure I can make it free for 10 people. I've made enough money doing development work and consulting while using Reflector that $350 seems like a reasonable price for me to pay. At the same time, I know that there are lots of folks out there doing good work that can't pay $35.
UPDATE: Just got off the phone with Red-Gate and they've offered to match with 50 licenses (I'm still paying for the first 10 so I now have a total of 60 to give away). As such, I'm extending the deadline through Friday, February 11th.
FINAL UPDATE: I was pleasantly surprised when Red Gate initially offered the additional 50 licenses, but I was blown away when I talked to them again and they offered another 50 for a total of 100. Not only that, but they said that rather than wait for V7 to be released that they are going to be giving Reflector Pro licenses (the $95 one), which will convert to the Reflector VS license when version 7 is released! I'll be emailing the folks who get a license on Saturday 2/12 and Sunday 2/13. Licenses should arrive on Monday 2/14 or Tuesday 2/15. Thanks to everyone who commented! BTW, if you missed the cutoff I see that Dan Maharry is giving away Reflector 7 licenses on his blog.
I used Reflector a lot to look into Microsoft's source code, it's faster than reading MSDN and more explanatory. Reflector is also priceless to understand how things are implemented (for example Linq). I will keep on using Reflector even if I have to pay $35 (even better if I get a license for free from you).
I've used Reflector for almost the entire time I've been a .NET developer (7 years now). I've found it to be an invaluable tool for figuring out where an issue is between my code and either library or third-party code. While the source code for .NET is available, with Reflector I know that I'm looking at what the code actually IS.
This is very good tool. I think this is not a good move on Redgate's part. I remember a time when Reflector is competing against other .NET dissemblers. Maybe Redgate's move would revive those other other projects.
I'm in the same boat, I've used Lutz' Reflector since I first found it YEARS ago, I don't remember when to be honest. I remember watching him progressively release new versions and I love what you could (and still can) do with it. I was sad that he decided to stop supporting it but at least he made sure that someone else would continue to support it, and still for free no less. The fact that RedGate is now not only going to be charging a fee for the next version (v7) but are also going be time-bombing v6, it's like a slap in the face. If it's proven inviable to continue to support and improve on Reflector, I agree with the opinion that they should have passed the torch to someone else willing to continue to develop it or even open it up to the community. That's how they got it in the first place, so they should honor it's origins.
Let me be clear, I don't mind that they charge for their tools, if they had developed Reflector from the start for free and then decided they needed to charge for it, that'd be fine to me. But the fact is they didn't develop it, it was handed to them on a silver platter with a preexisting user base. I personally don't believe they have the right to charge for it. If they were really confident in the value their improvements add (which they claim to be the reason for the cost change), they wouldn't have felt the need to timebomb the previous version. To me it's a pretty sleazy way of doing business.
Personally, I think they should open the reflector project up to the community, I believe that would be the best thing for the tool. Baring that they should at least remove the timebomb on v6, and let their price of v7 speak for the improvements they have added. If they are really worth the 35$ for v7 over v6 people will still buy it, and lastly I think Lutz had better be getting a portion of that 35$ licencing fee.
Nick A: Great stuff, thanks for posting your thoughts! I have no idea what the deal with Lutz was/is, I hope he made some money off of it. Im still seeing lots of interesting posts in the forums and cant wait to see how it all turns out.
I going to be converting a large amount old Win32 code written in Delphi over to C# and Reflector is big part of the process. I understand why Red Gate needs to charge a fair price for .NET Reflector, but I would love a free license.
I've been using Reflector for some time. I use it on an almost daily basis and there doesn't seem to be a competitor to it. I've heard that the new versions will have BAML support as well, which will be very usefull to me. I will miss the days that I didn't have to keep this backed up on a disk. I got so used to being able to simply download it when I needed on whichever development machine I happened to be on.
The Reflector "debacle" might be a PR issue for Red-Gate, but does any serious .NET developer not use it? I cannot count the times that I have fixed a bug or learned a cool trick or technique using it.
I'm a .net developer for 5 or 6 years now, and as i'm currently learning to use WPF, i can't imagine the most useful free .net tool ever being now 35$. It's not very expensive, but the fact it's free always have made the tool even simpler to use. If you want me to learn correctly WPF, you'll give me a license :p
When RedGate took over Reflector from Lutz I discussed it with others in the community and the clear consensus was that it would end up as a paid-for product. My major concern is how often will you need to pony up? I know that v7 will have a perpetual licence but I'm guessing the v8 will require another payment and so on.
Its always sad to see a free tool go paid, but they do have a business to run and nobody should fault them for that. I'd love to get the new version. Thanks for making this happen and thanks Red Gate for adding to the license pool, very nice ?
If this for the sake of revenue, the decision appears exceptionally short-sighted. New versions of .Net, C# and VB.Net eventually bring users to upgrade anyway, and the next version of .Net is right around the corner.
I found reflector to be priceless for me a month or two ago when I had to reflect out one of our data layer DLLs because LINQ2SQL hardcoded the connection string as an attribute in it instead of looking at the web.config. Good thing too, because it was pointed to the test instead of the production database!
When I need Reflector I have always been glad it was there. Primarily my use is to examine assemblies to find out how they work when the API documentation isn't what you need it to be. This includes overcoming the shortcomings of other developers and companies that didn't have the time or money to spend documenting their code. In addition, Reflector comes in handy when I need to use an assembly written by a developer that doesn't use English. Sometimes the only way to figure out why things aren't working is to look under the covers in order to figure out how the code is expected my code to work.
I have also written several small utilities throughout my eight years as a .Net developer. In that time I have had several computers that have undergone several more OS images. During that time I have lost quite a bit of source code, but I still have the assemblies lying around. In addition, some of the projects are from VS 2002 and I don't want to have to install and fire up an old copy of that just to look at a piece of code I wrote 8 years ago.
I think the fact that Reflector has always been free has given Microsoft a reason to not give developers an alternative. Now that the pay per use model is being implemented developers are left without the support they have just assumed would always be there. I wonder what Red-Gate would think if all of sudden the Apache Foundation decided to charge a $35 fee for log4net. I imagine they would switch to another free alternative like EntLib from Microsoft. I have no doubt that developers will start asking Microsoft to provide reflection based tooling in Visual Studio. When they do Reflector will be mostly forgotten, unfortunately for Lutz who I have a great deal of respect for. Until Microsoft does provide that tooling, I would sure appreciate a free copy of Reflector 7.
Keep in mind that the 35$ is probably going to be for Reflector alone. They've been charging 95$ per user for their Reflector Pro for integration to Visual Studio for a while now and that's probably going to still going to cost you extra. On a side note, I noticed that if you try to use Reflector on itself a large portion of the methods give a an obfuscation message when you try to view their disassembly
Considering how much I use Reflector, and how much I've learned from it, it's an invaluable tool for any serious .NET developer. Valiant efforts like Cecil not withstanding, there's just no competition.
Here's my take: RedGate was clear that they were going to continue to offer a free version. They've since backed out on that, and not only that, but they're trying to weasel out of their original statements by claiming they never "promised" anything. That doesn't sound like a company that's humbly and sincerely apologizing for where circumstances have led; that sounds like a company that knows full well that they lied and is now trying desperately (and pathetically) to save face. There's no reason to believe they wouldn't do the same thing again in a heartbeat.
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