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What does Lutz Roeder think about all this?

In my mind, his is the single most important voice in all this. Outside Redgate, he alone knows just what, if any, promises or assurances were made, and whether this action breaches such. We like to assume that it does, to justify our indignation. Personally, though, Lutz is the only person whose opinion on this matters to me beyond my own personal feelings.

I believe developers deserve to be paid for their work if that is the agreement they make with their users. But Lutz never asked me for money, and in fact visibly assured us:

"Red Gate will continue to provide the free community version and is looking for your feedback and ideas for future versions."
http://blog.lutzroeder.com/2008/08/future-of-net-reflector.html

It is interesting to note, however, that assurance was not a part of Redgate's official announcement page at
http://www.red-gate.com/our-company/about/news/net-reflector
nor the SimpleTalk article
http://www.simple-talk.com/opinion/opinion-pieces/the-future-of-reflector-/
they and Lutz both reference on their respective announcement pages.

I wonder if this is reflective of differences in the two parties' understanding of whatever agreement there was?

Copying this post at the below location:
http://bloodgate.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/what-does-lutz-roeder-think-of-redgates-reflector-move/
TimE
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  • wellilein
    :idea: We should ask Lutz to make his version open source if he did not sell it to RedGate. Maybe he still owns the initial creator rights and is able to do so.
    This will bring us some years back, but that's not too bad.
    wellilein
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  • KristoferA
    I think you're forgetting something important: Lutz didn't give away his work for free.

    If he wanted to do that, he could of course have released it as open source through codeplex or whatever. He didn't do that; he sold it to Redgate.

    Instead of going through the hassle of charging each individual user, he charged Redgate for his work and left it to them to figure out how to charge the users. They tried freemium, and decided it didn't work so now they're trying a different licensing model.

    I can imagine that both Mr Roeder and Redgate have invested a lot of time and money into this excellent tool. Isn't it fair that they get paid for their work/investment? I think it is.
    KristoferA
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