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.NET Reflector no longer a free tool - An open letter to the .NET community
- Shanewho 16y agoSo how long until someone else makes a free, open source version...?
- jwilson11 16y agoIsn't that what it used to be and then was bought by Red Gate?
- Shanewho 16y agoI don't think it was ever open source, just a free software maintained by 1 person.
- saurik 16y agoYeah, and that guy was someone researching code UI interaction: Lutz Roeder. It actually even required you to sign up with your email to download ;P. (I'm the guy who had the open source alternative back in the day called Anakrino, which was frankly too hard for people to help me with because it was written with C++ WTL and a ton of custom COM glue code. If I had written it in .NET I may have gotten a lot of traction and code submissions.)
- tptacek 16y ago(For the benefit of the class: the .NET Reflector decompiles compiled .NET binaries back to cross-referenced source code.) Not very. Lots of shops have nascent versions of the underlying mechanism in Reflector; for instance, if you need to instrument .NET programs for testing, you have a good chunk of it. On the other hand, Reflector has a very effective UI, and $35 isn't even a rounding error. There will be more free alternatives to Reflector now, but I for one will probably be happy to shell out a trivial sum of money to keep using the best one.
- abyssknight 16y agoJust wanted to say that this is perhaps the most accurate response to this sort of situation that I've heard in awhile. If it is a good piece of work, why not pay for it? The time it would take to verify a FOSS solution meets your needs already outweighs the $35 perpetual license fee. Not to mention, this thing rocks. For fun and profit, peek into some Silverlight containers and run Reflector on the DLLs.
- darklajid 16y agoI might get hit for this, but.. 1) As others have commented already: The product was free with basically _all_ features already working. Sure, it might need some work to support a complete new runtime version (i.e. 4). I don't know. And, problematic in this case for the image here is that this is a mostly "invisible" improvement. You still wonder "What do they actually add?" 2) Their "update or stop using" policy is sleazy, imo. I stopped using the tool at that point, because in my world that's not a viable way to offer any product (free or otherwise). 3) Taking over a free tool with the clear and open statement that "it's going to stay free" bites you, if you back off later. I'm sure there are good reasons (commercially) for this decision now, but it still ends up as a public "Whoops, failed" for me. No love from my side, not because of the price (I agree with you on that point), but the "image" of this tool is utterly damaged in my world.
- rbanffy 16y ago> If it is a good piece of work, why not pay for it? I only hope they don't timebomb the paid version like they did the freeware version.
- steveklabnik 16y agoThe announcement explicitly says it doesn't contain a timebomb.
- bmccormack 16y agoMiguel and the mono team will probably knock this out before the weekend.
- Monkeyget 16y agoWith a powerful API suc has Cecil ( http://www.mono-project.com/Cecil http://www.mono-project.com/Cecil ) It doesn't look too hard to create a clone.
- AGorilla 16y agoWhat a lot of people are missing is that a reflection tool like this probably requires a lot of development just to stay current with the newest versions of .NET. An OSS clone would not be a write-once ordeal, it would have to be a continuously active project.
- space-monkey 16y agoReflector is a great tool. They should charge if they can.
- ntulip 16y agocrap - will be sticking to my free version. Soon they will charge for access to their own software documentation.
- toadi 16y agoDon't see the harm in charging money for labor. Everybody needs to be payed and it doesn't seem a ripoff price.
- timrobinson 16y agoSo the OSS community wouldn't do a better job of building a .NET decompiler?
- toadi 16y agoIs that what you understood from my comment? Little bit touchy ;)
- timrobinson 16y agoI agree $35 isn't a ripoff price, but not that 'everybody needs to be paid'. For instance, Red Gate recently added an F# mode, which essentially doesn't work. If Reflector had been open source and free, I'd have been willing to get this feature running. The benefit I'd derive from a working F# mode would likely make the effort worthwhile.
- toadi 16y agoThat's true. But not everybody needs open source their software. And i'm not judging against open sourcing software either.
- johnzabroski 16y agoI could be interested in building a Reflector clone if somebody would write an F# plug-in to the project. I would probably start with looking at the CCI-Metadata project on Codeplex, and the Microsoft Phoenix compiler framework. Mono has similar libraries, but I only know a very small subset of Mono.Cecil API. Cheers, Z-Bo
- krobertson 16y ago$35 isn't bad, and Reflector is an awesome tool. It'll pay for itself it no time. If it started generating some revenue, they could probably give more time to it and make it even better. As a developer, you need to maintain your toolset. $35 is small fries. Sure, enterprisey .NET has a slew of expensive profilers, testing frameworks, and everything, but I think the price for Reflector is very reasonable. Other fields are far more used to paying for their tools. Construction, mechanics, machinists, mechanical/electrical engineer.
- timrobinson 16y agoBut Reflector was free for years until Red Gate took it on. And since then, Red Gate haven't done a lot with it to justify the cost: apart from the Visual Studio addin, the basic functionality is the same.
- kenjackson 16y agoThe Pro version did add support for debugging which is pretty awesome. The only problem is that you can't add breakpoints into arbitrary points in the IL. You have to be able to access it via the object browser, which requires a public class/method. If they fixed that it would be worth twice its price. Now, I think the technology is great, but not useful for me.
- johnzabroski 16y agoI didn't know that. Thanks for the info about the debugging support. I guess I have to give them credit for that.
- krobertson 16y agoI'll agree that they haven't done a lot, however $35 pays for maybe 30 mins of some devs time? There is no way I'd complain about $35. If they wanted to charge like $300 or $3000, then sure.
- fmavituna 16y agoNice and short interview with Red Gate CEO about this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKnEjiSGZLA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKnEjiSGZLA which explains commercial reasons and why they thought it was possible to keep it free and why they changed their mind
- aforty 16y agoReflector is a fantastic tool. I have no problem with them charging a very fair price for it.
- hippich 16y agoYeah. I do not believe free but not open source can live for a long time. If it becomes good - it will require more dedication to work on product. And this could be achieved either by open source community or by charging for product.
- nlawalker 16y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but existing versions will continue to be offered and will be free - is that right? I thought Lutz Roeder agreed with Red Gate that RG was free to improve upon Reflector and sell it, but that the original had to be offered for free. Obviously the version upgrade counts as improvements, but the original should still be offered for free.
- timrobinson 16y ago"The free version will continue working until May 30, 2011." http://www.red-gate.com/products/dotnet-development/reflector/announcement-faq http://www.red-gate.com/products/dotnet-development/reflecto...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- nlawalker 16y agoThanks, didn't see that. Wow, that's disappointing. They took a developer's free tool in good faith and now they're locking it away. They give continued maintenance and improvement as the reason for the change, but all that means here is that they've just now figured out what they should have realized when they took the tool originally, which is that a slightly-improved version of Reflector that cost money wouldn't be able to compete with the original if the original was provided for free. The original is plenty powerful enough for most people. The only reason they can't release the free version to the web, non-timebombed, and put a disclaimer on it that says its no longer supported/maintained is that they can't compete with it.
- danielmason 16y agoIt seems like most messages of this type try to pretend that it's not about money. The worst is when a company uses lines like "mutually beneficial" or "we're confident this will be better for our customers." When I read that, I'm not just getting unpleasant news -- I'm getting unpleasant news from someone who thinks I'm stupid. Redgate's message is candid and addresses me like a grown-up. I think that's much better.
- damien7579 16y agoA good point and they're making things simpler in the process - here's the product, it's $35 and this is what it does - no more messages, reminders about a pro version and removal of timebombs. Plus future versions will probably get even more serious features because they can justify it commercially with invested time vs income. You know where you stand.
- gisenberg 16y agoRed Gate's FAQ states: "we think ultimately this decision will be good for the community." So much for that ;)
- wingo 16y agoTheir web page has a box on it; how quaint. I remember getting software in boxes.
- icey 16y agoHmmmm. A forum ostensibly targeting people who want to be in the business of making money with software up in arms about a company trying to make money with software. Am I allowed to call this ironic?
- xpaulbettsx 16y agoThe thing is though, .NET Reflector used to be Freeware, written by a guy in his spare time (incidentally, who is now an architect on Blend). He sold it to Red Gate, who keep trying to monetize it in increasingly intrusive ways (forcing updates, popping dialogs, etc). While I understand Red Gate's need to make a return on their work, they've gone about it in an unpopular way, trying to force people to pay for an extra feature (debugging through code w/o source) that many people simply don't want.
- robin_reala 16y agoOlder versions look like they’ll remain freeware; you can’t really begrudge Red Gate for charging for future work.
- xpaulbettsx 16y agoNo, they won't. Red Gate has timebombed them so they'll stop working in March.
- acqq 16y agoIf they are also written in .NET wouldn't patching the timebomb be more than easy: first you decompile the Reflector...
- SafdarIqbal 16y agoI tried that once; it's obfuscated.
- amirmc 16y ago
- tomasr 16y agoReflector is a great tool, no denying it, but it's been fairly buggy for me since Red-Gate took it over. Also, yes, $35 isn't much, provided the license is per-user. If it's per-machine, it would cost most devs a lot more (I'd need at least 5-6 licenses for all my VMs + desktop + laptop). That's a whole different story. I will say, though, that I have no interest or desire in the debugging or VS integration features; those are useless to me.
- joebo 16y agoI'm disappointed. There are many other options for licensing that would bring in revenue without hurting the solo developer or non-commercial developer. It could be free for non-commercial use, or it could be limited to a 3 users within a corporate environment. I believe their revenue will come from companies adding it to their developer tool budget, not from the individual. Let the individual love it at home and then ask for it at work. Every company I've worked at was honest about paying for 'commercial use' or more than X users.
- kenjackson 16y agoI pay $59 for a Roku box I watch at home -- why wouldn't I pay $35 for Reflector?
- blahblahblah 16y agoIs there any programmer on the planet who has trouble justifying the ROI of a $35 expenditure for a useful tool? This is a total non-issue.
- georgemcbay 16y agoIt always stings to have to pay for something you used to get for free -- basic human nature. On the other hand, Reflector is either worth $35 or isn't. At a price that low, the decision is pretty binary -- is the tool worth the cost of a decent dining-out dinner or not? If not, live without it.
- rbanffy 16y agoI think it's fair to say it was never free. It was only infinitely inexpensive. BTW, shouldn't the title make the distinction between free software and freeware?
- thisisfmu 16y agoIn my view it is entirely fair game for them to charge for what they own but this is also an instance of why to avoid the .NET ecosystem altogether. The ethos I follow and many developers whose opinion I care about follow as well is that platform technology and the most fundamental tools must not be closed source. The irony with Reflector is that while branded a debugging tool it is mainly good for reverse engineering, so Red Gate are now effectively charging for access to third parties' source code, which I personally find a bit troubling.
- thisisfmu 16y agowhoever downvoted this to 0: what is wrong with this comment?
- innes 16y agoYes, yes, $35 is not a lot of money. But the convenience of being able to download Reflector to any machine that you happen to be sitting at will be lost as a result of this. Looking forward to the Mono Reflector clone...
- AGorilla 16y agoTotally worth it.
- cheald 16y agoI'll preface this my saying that the last time I touched .NET was about six years ago, but my biggest turnoff with the .NET community was that it seemed like everyone wanted their $5, $10, $50 for everything. Libraries and tools that I could get for free with C++ or Ruby or Python seemed to all have price tags associated with them in .NET world. I don't remember the last time I saw the source for an assembly on GitHub et al. I don't mind paying for good tools (and I would absolutely class Reflector as one), but there seem(s/ed) to be this very top-down mentality in the .NET world that everyone in every step of the chain has to make a buck. Reflector was a shining example of a great free tool in a sea of pay-for dreck, and it's quite sad to see that example die. It's a bit disappointing, because this mentality seems like it really does a lot to stifle hobbyist exploration of the platform when it's doing cost you $48 in assorted widgets to build the toolset you need to try out an idea. Edit: I should clarify that I don't think this is a bad thing, and I absolutely feel that Reflector justifies the price tag. The story just sparked some memories of my time in .NET that go a long way towards explaining why I'm not a .NET developer today. My time doing .NET development was in a professional context for my employer, so it's not like I couldn't get the tools due to cost issues, but the massive culture gap left an impression on me.
- mryall 16y agoI suspect this is because all the young developers who have the free time and inclination to release their efforts as open source are writing Ruby rather than .NET and Java these days. In a few years, they'll have mortgages and families too and will try to start charging for their work. The wheel goes round. > this mentality seems like it really does a lot to stifle hobbyist exploration of the platform ... It definitely does seem to stifle innovation on these platforms. Although if you need to use a bunch of commercial widgets in order to try out an idea, you're probably doing it wrong.
- cheald 16y agoI understand what you're saying, but I don't think it's necessarily accurate. There are lots of people with marriages and families making good money in more open communities. I honestly don't believe the line that ".NET is a professional's community, Ruby et all are just for hobbyists". .NET has been relegated to a professional community because of the buy-in for everything, but it really doesn't have to be that way to make a living writing code. Speaking as a 27 year-old-married-with-two-kids Rubyist, it's entirely possible to make a living charging for your work and still give away useful tools and libraries. I keep a GitHub account and publish code there, usually under MIT or BSD licenses, and while I don't publish everything I write, I have benefited so much from the open source that others have written that I contribute back to the community where I can, and somehow manage to get the bills paid at the end of the month.
- snprbob86 16y agoLooks like JetBrains is going to release an alternative: http://blogs.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2011/02/reflections-on-recent-news/ http://blogs.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2011/02/reflections-on-rec...