.NET Reflector should never be charged for...

[michaelweinhardt]

It is a quintessential development tool in the .NET community.

It has always been free.

Lutz Roeder built it and gave it out for free while being super busy at Microsoft.

Charge more for your other tools or ask for donations for this one, or open source it, but don't charge for it.

Either way, I'm sure there'll be a free alternative out there now or soon.

Very sad day for the .NET community.

[omheien]

HAHAHA!! "Charge more for the other tools" Thats a good one

Here in .no we have a tax on our roads. The tax is something every car owner has to pay for each car owned with a licence plate. The tax is not that much, its about $200 a year pr. car. Now, in various places we allso have toll roads, a price to cross a bridge, go through a tunnel, use a ferry, drive over a mountain etc. etc. Some ppl are naging all the time because of this and they say, remove all tolls and put the cost on the car tax instead. Would you say that this is fair? Should I that live near Oslo really pay more tax for my two cars just because some other ppl nead to cross a bridge in Bodø (2000 Km away from my town). No! Put the TAX where it belongs and dont bother other ppl.

[RichardD]

Fair enough, but imagine this:

You drive down a toll-free road every day on your way to work.
Your government decides it wants some more money, so it's going to introduce a toll on that road.
Knowing that everyone will simply bypass that road to avoid the toll, they decide to back-date the toll and charge anyone who's driven down that road in the last ten years.

Would you think that was acceptable?

[michaelweinhardt]

Anyway, all I'm saying is that .NET Reflector should never be charged for so, if redgate is having income issues around something they said they'd never charge for, they should seek alternative revenue streams or whatever they need to do to not charge for it.

If that's not something they can do, they should keep their promise ie hand it over to the open source community or some other organisation that *can* maintain it for nothing.

Having said all that, I'm quite happy with ILSpy...