(For the benefit of the class: the .NET Reflector decompiles compiled .NET binaries back to cross-referenced source code.)

Not very. Lots of shops have nascent versions of the underlying mechanism in Reflector; for instance, if you need to instrument .NET programs for testing, you have a good chunk of it.

On the other hand, Reflector has a very effective UI, and $35 isn't even a rounding error. There will be more free alternatives to Reflector now, but I for one will probably be happy to shell out a trivial sum of money to keep using the best one.

Just wanted to say that this is perhaps the most accurate response to this sort of situation that I've heard in awhile. If it is a good piece of work, why not pay for it? The time it would take to verify a FOSS solution meets your needs already outweighs the $35 perpetual license fee. Not to mention, this thing rocks.

For fun and profit, peek into some Silverlight containers and run Reflector on the DLLs.

I might get hit for this, but..

1) As others have commented already: The product was free with basically _all_ features already working. Sure, it might need some work to support a complete new runtime version (i.e. 4). I don't know. And, problematic in this case for the image here is that this is a mostly "invisible" improvement. You still wonder "What do they actually add?"

2) Their "update or stop using" policy is sleazy, imo. I stopped using the tool at that point, because in my world that's not a viable way to offer any product (free or otherwise).

3) Taking over a free tool with the clear and open statement that "it's going to stay free" bites you, if you back off later. I'm sure there are good reasons (commercially) for this decision now, but it still ends up as a public "Whoops, failed" for me.

No love from my side, not because of the price (I agree with you on that point), but the "image" of this tool is utterly damaged in my world.

> If it is a good piece of work, why not pay for it?

I only hope they don't timebomb the paid version like they did the freeware version.

The announcement explicitly says it doesn't contain a timebomb.

Miguel and the mono team will probably knock this out before the weekend.

With a powerful API suc has Cecil ( http://www.mono-project.com/Cecil ) It doesn't look too hard to create a clone.

Isn't that what it used to be and then was bought by Red Gate?

I don't think it was ever open source, just a free software maintained by 1 person.

Yeah, and that guy was someone researching code UI interaction: Lutz Roeder. It actually even required you to sign up with your email to download ;P. (I'm the guy who had the open source alternative back in the day called Anakrino, which was frankly too hard for people to help me with because it was written with C++ WTL and a ton of custom COM glue code. If I had written it in .NET I may have gotten a lot of traction and code submissions.)