.NET Reflector no longer a free tool - An open letter to the .NET community

http://www.red-gate.com/products/dotnet-development/reflector/announcement

by amirmc • 15 years ago

93 82 15 years ago

red-gate.com

Shanewho2• 15 years ago

So how long until someone else makes a free, open source version...?

jwilson11• 15 years ago

Isn't that what it used to be and then was bought by Red Gate?

Shanewho2• 15 years ago

I don't think it was ever open source, just a free software maintained by 1 person.

tptacek• 15 years 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• 15 years ago

Just 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.

bmccormack• 15 years ago

Miguel and the mono team will probably knock this out before the weekend.

Monkeyget• 15 years ago

With a powerful API suc has Cecil ( http://www.mono-project.com/Cecil ) It doesn't look too hard to create a clone.

space-monkey• 15 years ago

Reflector is a great tool. They should charge if they can.

ntulip2• 15 years ago

crap - will be sticking to my free version. Soon they will charge for access to their own software documentation.

toadi3• 15 years ago

Don't see the harm in charging money for labor. Everybody needs to be payed and it doesn't seem a ripoff price.

timrobinson7• 15 years ago

So the OSS community wouldn't do a better job of building a .NET decompiler?

johnzabroski6• 15 years ago

The ripoff is in the fact that they have added nothing significant to the product other than making it more difficult for people to obtain.

DrJokepu2• 15 years ago

You can't stick to your free version, I'm afraid. There's a built in expiration date in the latest free version; after April 15th 2011 it will no longer work.

DrJokepu2• 15 years ago

(As a side note, it would be interesting to use Reflector to decompile Reflector itself and remove the expiration date or extend it to the far future. I know it's illegal and unethical, but it would be a fun and interesting exercise.)

ntulip2• 15 years ago

well - that's unfortunate.

krobertson3• 15 years 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.

timrobinson7• 15 years ago

But 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.

kenjackson2• 15 years ago

The 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.

krobertson3• 15 years ago

I'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• 15 years ago

Nice and short interview with Red Gate CEO about this : 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• 15 years ago

Reflector is a fantastic tool. I have no problem with them charging a very fair price for it.

hippich• 15 years ago

Yeah. 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.

nlawalker2• 15 years ago

Correct 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.

timrobinson7• 15 years ago

"The free version will continue working until May 30, 2011."

http://www.red-gate.com/products/dotnet-development/reflecto...

danielmason• 15 years ago

It 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• 15 years ago

A 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• 15 years ago

Red Gate's FAQ states: "we think ultimately this decision will be good for the community."

So much for that ;)

wingo• 15 years ago

Their web page has a box on it; how quaint. I remember getting software in boxes.

icey• 15 years ago

Hmmmm. 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?

xpaulbettsx2• 15 years ago

The 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• 15 years ago

Older versions look like they’ll remain freeware; you can’t really begrudge Red Gate for charging for future work.

larsberg• 15 years ago

FYI, Lutz was on Blend (then called Sparkle) since he first produced reflector, at least as far as I remember. He was the brave soul tasked with integrating some components my team was producing for them, back in the deep, dark, early-aughts.

mryall2• 15 years ago

> trying to force people to pay for an extra feature (debugging through code w/o source) that many people simply don't want

Isn't that the way software businesses work? They build features that they hope will convince people to pay for upgrades or renewals. If people don't want the new feature, the company won't make any money.

It doesn't seem to be an evil or malicious route to me; it's just charging for something which was free before because they can no longer maintain it that way.

tomasr• 15 years ago

Reflector 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• 15 years ago

I'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.

kenjackson2• 15 years ago

I pay $59 for a Roku box I watch at home -- why wouldn't I pay $35 for Reflector?

blahblahblah• 15 years ago

Is 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• 15 years ago

It 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.

rbanffy4• 15 years ago

I 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?

thisisfmu3• 15 years ago

In 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.

thisisfmu3• 15 years ago

whoever downvoted this to 0: what is wrong with this comment?

innes2• 15 years ago

Yes, 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...

cheald2• 15 years ago

I'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.

mryall2• 15 years ago

I 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.

cheald2• 15 years ago

I 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.

tlianza• 15 years ago

I totally agree with you, and I think the simple explanation is that it starts at the top. You're building software with Microsoft tools on Microsoft platforms. You're in "commercial-land" right out of the gate. You're probably building software at a big company, or for a big company. Paying for software is common, and not a big issue. The cultures are just different.

It's not a reflection of the quality of the software or the quality of the engineers - it's just a fundamentally different culture.

krobertson3• 15 years ago

I still don't get why individual developers are so cheap. It is a paradox.

$35 is nothing. I totally believe in supporting a good product with a very reasonable price.

Compare $35 for Reflector to $800 for TypeMock... $200 for Resharper... $300+ for dotTrace.

If you use something daily, <$50 is nothing... even <$100.

rayvega• 15 years ago

Comparing the price of each tool individually yes. However, if you add them all up then it really starts to be costly if you want to use most of those tools. You are limited in what you can budget for as an individual developer and are forced to look at the marginal cost of each new purchase as well as the opportunity cost of not buying some other tool unrelated to your purchase.

(Just in your example, we are already at $1335 not including the price of Visual Studio itself since the free express edition does not support add-ins such as ReSharper and other productivity tools)

snprbob86• 15 years ago

Looks like JetBrains is going to release an alternative:

http://blogs.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2011/02/reflections-on-rec...

.NET Reflector no longer a free tool - An open letter to the .NET community

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