“Red Gate announced today that, under a new agreement, it will be responsible for the future development of .NET Reflector, the popular tool authored by Lutz Roeder.
Reflector is one of the must-have tools if you are a .Net developer or tester, allowing you to really understand the software and APIs in a very unique fashion. Personally, I always have a copy of Reflector open on my desktop and without it .Net development would be very different!
If you are interested knowing more about this agreement, I would recommend you read the interview between James Moore and Lutz Roeder on Simple Talk. The most important part – “Red Gate will continue to offer the tool for free to the community.”
…”
“Red Gate has recently acquired .NET Reflector. We will continue to maintain a free version for the benefit of the community. For more information on the deal, please see the interview on Simple-Talk.
Over the next few months we will be exploring ways we can make Reflector even more useful to .NET Developers. We always welcome feedback from the community so, if you have any ideas, please post them on the Reflector forum.
…”
I’m not sure how I feel about this… On one hand I think it’s outstanding that a staple utility like Reflector has “done good” and been acquired by a good sized company, hopefully funding strong future growth.
But on the other hand, I’m a little sad too. Reflector has been a staple of .Net development for so long, and been free for so long, that this move feels a little scary. While Redgate has a good rep, the word “maintain a free version” doesn’t alleviate all my concerns. That more sounds like a limited, lite, limited, “community” version than the Reflector we know and love. I guess time will tell…
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I agree - this news is equal parts great... and scary. Reflector has always given me a warm fuzzy feeling, and is arguably the most important tool in my .NET toolkit after VS. Redgate, please do good by the community with this one...
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