Red Gate Software, a provider of tools for Microsoft technology professionals, says it will provide free perpetual licenses for current .NET Reflector 6.x users who upgrade to version 6.8. The free version of .NET Reflector was previously planned to expire at the end of May.
According to Red Gate, .NET Reflector is a popular tool because it's simple to use and effective. Developers use it for a range of tasks, including decompiling .NET code to understand how it works, learning or teaching the complexities of a .NET language, providing a better alternative to library documentation, recovering lost or unavailable source code, locating performance issues, analyzing dependencies, and checking obfuscation.
Users of version 6.6 who have been warned of an upcoming expiration should ignore the warning that this will be the last free version of Reflector. The auto update mechanism in any version of Reflector 6 can be used to automatically download V6.8 until the end of August. This does not require a visit to the Red Gate website. A serial key that will activate the free V6.8 license on as many as five machines will be sent via email to the user. There will be no other commercial use of email addresses, but the free version will contain news and promotion about the newest paid versions of .NET Reflector.
Version 6.8 is expected to be available in early May to current .NET Reflector 6.x users through the check for updates mechanism.
"We listened carefully to feedback from the .NET community and realized that enabling current V6.x users to continue using a free version is the right thing to do," says Greg Tillman, marketing manager for Red Gate's .NET Reflector team.
For more information and discussion, visit Red Gate's .NET Reflector forum.