One of my favorite .NET tools is about to transition in an unknown way.

“After more than eight years of working on .NET Reflector, I have decided it is time to move on and explore some new opportunities.”

So begins the email I just received from Lutz Roeder, the man behind Reflector, an almost scarily powerful tool for .NET development.

Eight years? Wow. Just doesn’t seem that long. But I can completely understand the desire to move on.

Unfotunately, the following passage gives a little clue as to what might be next.

“Red Gate will continue to provide the free community version and is looking for your feedback and ideas for future versions.”

Ah… So there will be a community version and then something else. The thing is, Reflector seems to be one of those tools that’s incredibly useful, to an incredibly small audience. And almost useless to everyone else. A bit like the SysInternals tools I’ve mentioned before. So successfully “productizing” it might be a pretty good challenge.

The thing is, even for me, and even though Reflector has been quite useful, I’m not sure I’d have paid for it, to be brutally honest.

But I have to applaud Mr. Roeder for what he’s accomplished and congratulate him in moving forward.