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59 comments
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rhyatt wrote:If Redgate can't support it as a free tool, they should turn it back over to the open source community who can successfully do it.
I sympathize with the idea, but I honestly doubt that the .NET community can keep something like Reflector alive for as long as Reflector has existed.
I know I'd happily pay for Reflector at $35 if I needed to but I know that's not viable for many developers I know, notably in other countries.
Right now I'm hoping MS wakes up to the importance of Reflector in .NET and realizes they have a severe gap in the SDK without Reflector. I hope they either acquire this software and include in the SDK or create something similar.
Redgate could get their investment back and the community would get their essential tool "back" as well.
In the end, my speculation is that the paid version of Reflector will not sustain the development of the tool. It will either become OSS or owned by MS... or it will disappear completely when C#5 arrives with new unsupported language features. -
I don't think redgate can be trusted.. and it should be turned back over to the open source community.
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I too feel US$35 is a reasonable price for this tool. I have this really odd notion that companies should make a profit for their efforts. I want to make a profit for my efforts.I know I'd happily pay for Reflector at $35 if I needed to but I know that's not viable for many developers I know, notably in other countries.
I disagree however about this being outside affordability for *developers*. I think any true developer (or even hobbyist) who bought (not pirated) Visual Studio can certainly come up with the cost of McDonalds for four, for a tool they will use.
As bad as this is going to sound, I'm okay if the $5/day outsource labor in third-world regions can't afford tools they use to reverse-engineer programs created by the original developer. Spending $35 is insignificant against the cost of armor-plating software against the onslaught of hackers.
Others have pointed out some good options such as- keeping v6 free per the original acquisition agreement,
- putting v6 source code back in the hands of the open source community,
- having a v7 Express version that is limited or carries ads,
- and a v7 Pro version for $35.
Of course if the $35 cost is to cover continued development then I would hope and expect there to be actual development of new capabilities. I would also hope that having the v6 code out there would generate some competition. -
I am shocked by the move. Yes, Red Gate needs money-every company does, but I feel this is the wrong decision. I agree with others here that this product should be released to the open source community. Red Gate should simply accept the loss as a bad investment. I'm curious to hear what Lutz thinks of all this.
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The thing is that V6 will stop working on Mai 30, 2011, at least that's what they announced. So you cannot even continue using the old version.
tlhintoq, if I had to pay even just 35$ for each of all the great tools I use as hobbyist (starting withj the .NET Fromework itself, ASP.NET MVC, Subversion, Mercurial, Git, VS Express versions, SQL Server express versions, Mono etc.), then I'd have to look for another hobby. Period. -
AvonWyss wrote:The thing is that V6 will stop working on Mai 30, 2011, at least that's what they announced. So you cannot even continue using the old version.
tlhintoq, if I had to pay even just 35$ for each of all the great tools I use as hobbyist (starting withj the .NET Fromework itself, ASP.NET MVC, Subversion, Mercurial, Git, VS Express versions, SQL Server express versions, Mono etc.), then I'd have to look for another hobby. Period.
I'm sorry to hear that. Its a rather extensive set of tools for a hobbyist I'll admit. But that is the nature of a hobby. It's not a constitutional right. I'm a hobbyist photographer. I don't expect all of my tools to be free. I had to pay (dearly) for my 1000mm supertelephoto lens, and my Canon 7D DSLR. I just have to decide what is important to my hobby. Every couple of years it means selling one camera body if I am to buy a newer one.
Hobbyist comic collectors, and hobbyist audiophiles don't expect their hobbies to be free. I lack an understanding of why people think that hobby coding should include free professional-level tools.
MS offers Express version of their tools. As stated earlier if RedGate offered an Express version of Reflector that would fit the rest of the model. A pro version of VS costs money, as should a pro version of Reflector. It seems pretty common sense to me. -
The thing is that V6 will stop working on Mai 30, 2011, at least that's what they announced. So you cannot even continue using the old version.
Really.. that sucks.. Once seeing the announcement my first thought was.. well screw em.. I'll keep using V6. But I guess I'll probably look for an alternative.. even if it costs.. because by principle this is bs. -
Well, the thing is that Canon doesn't forcefully take away your camera just to force you buying a new one. And that's what is happening here.tlhintoq wrote:I'm a hobbyist photographer. I don't expect all of my tools to be free. I had to pay (dearly) for my 1000mm supertelephoto lens, and my Canon 7D DSLR. I just have to decide what is important to my hobby. Every couple of years it means selling one camera body if I am to buy a newer one.
That said, it's not about getting everything for free. But the community providing free tools and open source software lives from this give-and-take. And such a decision of actually revoking a free tool from the community is not the same as asking for money for new stuff. -
tlhintoq wrote:I don't expect all of my tools to be free.
Agreed. However, I think we have a reasonable right to expect that those tools which are free will continue to work until the OS no longer supports them. I don't expect RedGate to update v6 to support Windows 12, but I certainly don't expect v6 to suddenly stop working just because RedGate want my money!
Forcing users of your free tool to pay for an upgrade they don't want? But those are the actions of an evil company, aren't they?! :evil:Homer: Uh, Milhouse saw the elephant twice and rode him once, right?
Mrs. Van Houten: Yes, but we paid you $4.
Homer: Well, that was under our old price structure. Under our new price structure, your bill comes to a total of $700. Now, you've already paid me $4, so that's just $696 more that you owe me. -
In my opinion redgate should at least remove the time bomb from current version. They should also release source code so that it can be maintained by the community.
Otherwise it will be just a matter of time before a cracked version or patch is released. -
rhyatt wrote:If Redgate can't support it as a free tool, they should turn it back over to the open source community who can successfully do it.
This makes everyone wonder if the point of acquiring the rights to it was to monetize the product to begin with, even if it was not the intention.
How about asking to have folks pay for support rather than to use ? This is more in line with the open source model.
Not interested in flame war, just wanting to float the balloon.
if the plan was to turn the userful free tool into profit in the first place, I think this move will anger the community so at the end it will do more harm than good/profit for red gate. it is evil. not the fact that red gate cannot support it as a free product, what's evil is taking something that is good and free away from the community.
raise the price on other popular red gate products, show some love for open source or give it back to the open source community.
cheers -
I am a long time customer, evangelist and friend of Red-Gate products, services and support. This caught me by total surprise. Well, not really. I was more disappointed when Lutz turned reflector over to Red-Gate. I felt at the time there could only be one motivation for this, not to fault Red-Gate, but they are a commercial product company. If it is true what the CEO says, then please turn it over to the community. It does not have to be CodePlex, this could be a new opportunity for Red-Gate to actually engage its user-customer base even more. Why not create the Red-Gate Open Source Community. You manage the software, releases etc., but let the Red-Gate Community develop and maintain it? Red-GatePlex.com? Let the community create extension and add-ins for Reflector that use Red-Gates tools. I see a bigger value in that then to try and sell a product for $39.00. The price is not really the issue for me and most, it is the principal of it all. I was using a tool Called Salamander ($2500.00) when Lutz release Reflector and have had it as a staple in my toolkit since. I have had nothing but praise for Red-Gate since I was introduced to them over 7 years ago…But this is not a good move…Neil, Can you hear me? Is this thing on?
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The move has angered this .NET developer. I've been using Lutz's tool since it's inception. That's right *lutz's* tool, not Redgate's. The only thing Redgate did was to add features I was never interested in anyhow.
Totally agree; just a matter of time until the new version is cracked, and I'll have no problem using it. -
Forget Red Gate. I say we fire up an open source project and start rivaling this product. Yes, it would take lots of work and effort, but I firmly believe there is enough talent and passion to keep this concept alive and free.
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gooch wrote:I am a long time customer, evangelist and friend of Red-Gate products, services and support. This caught me by total surprise. Well, not really. I was more disappointed when Lutz turned reflector over to Red-Gate. I felt at the time there could only be one motivation for this, not to fault Red-Gate, but they are a commercial product company. If it is true what the CEO says, then please turn it over to the community. It does not have to be CodePlex, this could be a new opportunity for Red-Gate to actually engage its user-customer base even more. Why not create the Red-Gate Open Source Community. You manage the software, releases etc., but let the Red-Gate Community develop and maintain it? Red-GatePlex.com? Let the community create extension and add-ins for Reflector that use Red-Gates tools. I see a bigger value in that then to try and sell a product for $39.00. The price is not really the issue for me and most, it is the principal of it all. I was using a tool Called Salamander ($2500.00) when Lutz release Reflector and have had it as a staple in my toolkit since. I have had nothing but praise for Red-Gate since I was introduced to them over 7 years ago…But this is not a good move…Neil, Can you hear me? Is this thing on?
I vote for RGP.com if it's not taken. on the side note, it might cost red-gate more to support the opensource comminity. this might not be feasible. I hope this move is a publicity stun but doesn't look like one. -
Great feedback , just in one day so far! I'm glad their email made as deep an impression on others as it did on myself.
I did have another thought I would like to add to the discussion - Redgate obviously has some serious skills in .net development and sql server mechanics, as evidenced by their work integrating their tools into the SQL Server 2008 Management Studio ( a Visual Studio 2008 shell essentially), so I really believe that Redgate has a lot that they could contribute to the future of .NET Reflector. I just don't like a free tool becoming a pay-to-play tool without sufficiently understood and accepted justification from the user base when so many depend on it daily.
If Redgate can contribute significantly to the development of the tool, then why not allow the user community to have a stake and manage it as an open source development effort with the community, with Redgate contributing from some revenue source (support, bundling, ads, etc) that would keep it free? And get the free labor in return?
I'm just a customer for the SQL tools myself, and really get more out of day's work using the SQL toolbelt than I would without it, so it saddens me that Redgate can't figure out a better way to handle this than directly monetizing the .NET Reflector. -
Could you imagine if Microsoft made Notepad $35? I know the analogy isn't perfect because there are not continuous improvements being made to Notepad and you already paid a lot more for the Windows license, and there are several great alternatives to Notepad but still, that is how I feel right now. Something that has been commoditized and worked into my daily job as a software engineer is now all the sudden not free. I'm sure the RedGate folk are sitting back there are talking about how this will just blow over after a few days and everyone will get on with their life and they are probably right but this just makes me angry. Being a somewhat rational person, I'm sure when I'm doing evaluations for new tools, I will pick the best tools out there for the price and this may still include RedGate but you better believe that if there is a competitor with a similar product at a similar price point, I'm going to go with the competitor (JetBrains, I'm looking at you).
And like many others have mentioned, the solution is just to continue to give away v6 for free (or open source, or ad support, or anything but what you guys are doing). If you do that, I'm totally happy. I don't need or want updates. If you don't do this, I'll patiently struggle through with ildasm until a competitor comes along (free or not) and then jump ship.
Now where it that spec for IL? Time to start reading up. -
Not to point out the blatantly obvious, but Reflector is *already* open sourced, and always has been. You can easily view the source of Reflector using... Reflector.
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RedGate has super-obfuscated Reflector, put in checks to stop it from running with any modifications and names all the variables with unicode characters that won't show up to make it completely impossible to make any attempt at looking at their code.CleverHuman wrote:Not to point out the blatantly obvious, but Reflector is *already* open sourced, and always has been. You can easily view the source of Reflector using... Reflector. -
CleverHuman wrote:Not to point out the blatantly obvious, but Reflector is *already* open sourced, and always has been. You can easily view the source of Reflector using... Reflector.
LOL - great point! -
See my post above - it's useless to open Reflector in Reflector.rhyatt wrote:CleverHuman wrote:Not to point out the blatantly obvious, but Reflector is *already* open sourced, and always has been. You can easily view the source of Reflector using... Reflector.
LOL - great point! -
JAssange wrote:
RedGate has super-obfuscated Reflector, put in checks to stop it from running with any modifications and names all the variables with unicode characters that won't show up to make it completely impossible to make any attempt at looking at their code.CleverHuman wrote:Not to point out the blatantly obvious, but Reflector is *already* open sourced, and always has been. You can easily view the source of Reflector using... Reflector.
Ah, so they have. (before I posted, I simply made sure it opened, I didn't check the names.)
I bet there will be people motivated enough to rename all that. Though it is more time than I'd want to take. Coming up with decent variable names for all that would be a PITA. -
With a little bit of help from http://ccimetadata.codeplex.com/ extracting Reflector code can happen. It won't be easy, but definitely possible to rename and extract compilable code.
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rhyatt wrote:If Redgate can't support it as a free tool, they should turn it back over to the open source community who can successfully do it.
Or give it to the Sysinternals team (now at Microsoft). They seem to be able to support very cool tools and offer them for free. -
"We also think we can expose a lot more people to Reflector, which will lead to much more widespread use and greater productivity for .NET developers."
I don't think that making Reflector paid tool will make it more widespread use. To the contrary, it'll become less accessible and less used. RedGate from a company that is perceived as supporting developers community will become just another company that sells software.
It makes perfectly good sense to have products paid and unpaid in the product portfolio. While the other products make profit, free product gets company name recognised.
Plus you take away Reflector from all people that program now for free on their home PCs. They will not buy Reflector 7. And do you think all that plugins for your product are being developed because companies pay for developing them?
And I love RedGate PR: "V6 will continue working untill end of May 2011". You are actually saying that V6 will stop working end of May and that all developers will have to buy a commercial product after that, because of the time-bomb implementet in V6.
I had a very good opinion about Red-Gate until today.
I know it's fair to get money for hard work, you're doing a good work RedGate, but if want to do something extra for the community, do continue with free version of Reflector. -
I don't have a strong objection to Red Gate charging $35 for the next version. You're a commercial company, you need to make money, yadda, yadda, yadda.
It's the timebomb on the existing version that makes me want to come puke my guts out in your lobby.
That blows.
You seriously need to reconsider keeping your word for all versions of Reflector previously released for free. You don't have to keep supporting the old version, but forcing everyone (who believed your original statements about keeping a free version of Reflector) to stop using it or pay $35 is just despicable. -
It seems redgate has forgotten what they promised:
http://www.simple-talk.com/opinion/opin ... eflector-/ -
Thanks for this.
This discussion is under the heading "Red Gate should turn .NET Reflector back to open source." So I'd better try and respond to that first off.
(This is in the FAQs - please do look these over.)
.NET Reflector wasn't an open source product before we acquired it, and it isn't one now. When it became obvious that things couldn't just carry on as they were, we did look at that as an option. But it really didn't make sense for us.
The other thing that's come out a couple of times is the time-bomb question. Reflector v7 is the first version to be coming out with no time bomb.
I Googled Reflector Time Bomb for the period up to July 2008, and you'll find this has been a pretty constant complaint forever. Forever ends in March. No more time bomb. -
That's a very weak argument. Just because Lutz did implement a forced update and people didn't like it there is no reason for RedGate not removing it on the first release unter the new ownership. And the other thing is that the license agreement doesn't cover the timebomb either, which is another reason why what you are doing is probably not even legal. Whether this timebomb has been part of the application forever doesn't really matter in that regard.jeremy.parsons wrote:I Googled Reflector Time Bomb for the period up to July 2008, and you'll find this has been a pretty constant complaint forever. Forever ends in March. No more time bomb. -
Gah, sometimes I wish we had some corporate smoothies to do this for us.
OK, so I missed "you broke your promise."
That's not true. Yes, I've read the posts from the time too. There really isn't anything there that's a promise that Reflector was going to be free forever. But yes, we did totally mean it to work out that way. We worked hard to make that viable. It just wasn't. So now we're asking people to pay $35 for Reflector.
For more on that, maybe watch the five minute interview on YouTube.
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This makes everyone wonder if the point of acquiring the rights to it was to monetize the product to begin with, even if it was not the intention.
How about asking to have folks pay for support rather than to use ? This is more in line with the open source model.
Not interested in flame war, just wanting to float the balloon.