Free Alternatives to Reflector
Blog Wednesday, February 23 2011Thanks to my friend Mike Etheridge for this news bit. A few days ago, I blogged about Red Gate's decision to make Reflector a commercial-only product. In other words, there will be no free version of Reflector when version 7 is released in late February of 2011. The developer community responded quickly.
On 17 February, about a week after my blog post concerning Red Gate's decision, JetBrains announced that they will be bundling a decompiler with ReSharper 6 after it launches. JetBrains hasn't released ReSharper 6 yet but you can get it via their Early Access Program nightly builds if you want to check it out. The decompiler looks quite good, at least the ways in which it's connected to the rest of the ReSharper suite: very well thought out and with the attention to detail that we've come to expect from the folks at JetBrains. The really good news from the announcement is that the decompiler will be unbundled and made available for free sometime after ReSharper 6 launches.
Another free tool called ILSpy was announced by Daniel Grunwald and David Srbecky on the SharpDevelop Wiki on 22 February. They claim that ILSpy development began after Red Gate's announcement just a few weeks ago which is somewhat amazing to me given the richness of what ILSpy can do in this initial release. A quick peek at the source code to ILSpy on github shows that they are using the Cecil (pronounced see-sil) decompiler from the mono project which explains why they've been able to achieve such a steep initial trajectory with ILSpy. I just hope that Daniel and David can find a way to voluntarily monetize their open source project in ways that Lutz Roeder (the inventor of Reflector) and Red Gate never did. A simple "Donate via PayPal" link in the About dialog would go a long way to making this tool free and technically excellent perpetually.
2.23.2011 at 12:29 PM
Hello, JetBrains will release his own reflector (decompilator) this year. You can find more here: blogs.jetbrains.com/.../resharper-6-bun
Best Regards from Poland :)
Lukasz
2.23.2011 at 4:49 PM
Thanks Lukasz, I tried to include that same link in my post but the tinymce editor did something really strange. In any case, I fixed it thanks to you.
3.01.2011 at 3:28 PM
I'm putting out a tool called GrayWolf at www.DigitalbodyGuard.com to fill the void of Reflector
It has the basics of code access, but I also started to add the ability to edit programs
3.01.2011 at 9:18 PM
Thanks JM. Interesting tool.
3.07.2011 at 7:35 AM
Great to hear that JetBrains and others are coming up with free alternatives. My mate told me about this website www.keepdecompilingfree.com. Wondering who might be behind it?
3.08.2011 at 11:02 AM
@Nicole: not sure. The site seems to only harvest e-mail addresses today. Suspicious enough that I wouldn't give them my address. The site was registered at GoDaddy using Domains by Proxy on 14 Feb 2011. Hard to say really who's behind it. I think I'll just visit the site again when they have something I can evaluate.
7.13.2011 at 10:33 AM
give a try to this:
www.telerik.com/.../free-decompilin
7.26.2011 at 1:11 PM
Why and how a tool would need to be monetized is beyond me. Yes, Lutz Roeder spent time building Reflector, but that was due to a need that he, himself had (and presumably a desire to earn props in the developer community). That need and the resulting product still exist. By yanking the free version, the recognition that Lutz has earned in the community of developers should sway. This is rightfully a community of helpful, sharing individuals who believe that by solving their own needs others will share in the reward. Stroustrup invented C++ out of need to quickly create tests for AT&T Bell Labs. Did he go commercial, yanking the language? No, instead he is well known and well respected and through his extraordinary talent, not through selling information, Stroustrup was a financially successful developer. Shame on you Lutz.