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3 comments
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Oh yes we can!
And for stupid management, too.
I cannot possibly believe that the decision to make Reflector paid-only was made by a programmer. I bet this guy wears a tie.
If you understand anything programmers, you know they are very stubborn people and they follow their principles. I understand you need money. And making the next version of Reflector paid-only is one of the most stupid business decisions I've heard of. You're not gonna get money now, developers hate you already and will hate you more once you kill their working versions.
Do you know how it looks like from a developer's point of view?
1. A talented guy all alone creates a wonderful unqiue product and offers it for free;
2. It quickly becomes second most useful tool after VS itself;
3. Some company takes over the product and replaces romantical Lutz Roeder's with some corporate Red Gate. Yes, we remember that.
4. The company promises Reflector will remain free;
4. Forced updates bring me the ads that I don't like but I don't really see many cool new features;
5. You announce you're charging $35 for it with an unpersuasive statement that neither tells us the story how you tried to keep it free nor offers any kind of free version for the community—nothing!
Sorry but I think this is highly offensive and I hope it kills your product.
Then you'd probably realize you picked even worse business model.
And yes, I'll crack Reflector V7 with an older Reflector—changing date a year back always worked for me.
Thanks,
Dan -
gaearon , qstarin Thanks for your comments.
gaearon I can see why you think the story looks this way. In the following video Simon (my boss and one of the two guys that own Red Gate) talks about some of our reasons for doing this. You can skip to (2:22) if you want to get to the reasons why we couldn’t make the free model work. You’ll also see that there are no ties at Red Gate except on the interviewees!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKnEjiSGZLA -
I absolutely love Reflector, and will happily pay $35 for it to stay current.
I work for a living, I get paid for it, and I expect you would like the same. No problem there.
However, the timebomb on v6 is ugly.
Seems like something Intuit would do, which made me quit using Quicken.
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Every minute that passes, hate for RedGate is propagating across the entire developer universe.
Their competitors are poised and pouncing.
The only way you folks can regain any credibility is to issue an immediate retraction of your decision to expire the community edition of Reflector v6.
It is amazing that RedGate thought such an action would be anything but a PR disaster.
Nevertheless, the common sentiment echoed is that we devs have no issue paying $35 for the basic version of Reflector. It is a bargain.
But expiring the version you've already made available to the community is offensive and greedy at best, criminal at worst.
I'd like to urge RedGate to reverse their decision. Tell us you will not expire v6.
Let your new version stand on its own merits. We will buy it if we find it worth the cost. Take the responsibility to make your own product good enough.
If you do not, I will never again support RedGate in any way - and I think you will find that sentiment distressingly common.