Reflector is no longer free

Yesterday, after several year of supporting reflector RedGate has turned it into a commercial product in releasing a new paid version (v7) taking down the free download. Naturally there is an uproar in the community about this move. What ticks most people is the fact that inside older versions of reflector there is a time-bomb causing reflector to delete itself unless you upgrade to the newest version.

While this time bomb was inserted along time ago (before it was picked by red-gate) the original intent was to make support easier by making sure only newer version of the tool was out there. Now this mechanism means that the free version can no longer be used.

While the price for the standard license is quite low (35$), my believe is that Red-Gate is now facing a public relationship hell, and so far their response has only made things worse. Red-Gate people only response so far was to either point out that this was an old mechanism, and the regular "we wish only to make things better", so far no actual direct response to any of the claims made by the community (here's an example thread - notice Greg Tillman answer)

Being a long user of reflector there's a good chance I'll purchase it however before I do that, it seems that alternatives are starting to pop around:

ILSpy

A new open source tool part of the SharpDeveloper IDE. I haven't tried it yet, but looking at the screencast it looks fairly similar to what I use reflector for, so this would be something ill certainly try.

keepdecompilingfree.com

Another interesting site i stumbled upon is this site http://www.keepdecompilingfree.com/ rumors claims that JetBrain might be involved, but so far I wasn't able to find any solid evidence for that. Knowing JetBrain, I do hope that there is some truth into this.

Posted in: tools