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Comment by DrJokepu | Hacker News Reader

You can't stick to your free version, I'm afraid. There's a built in expiration date in the latest free version; after April 15th 2011 it will no longer work.

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(As a side note, it would be interesting to use Reflector to decompile Reflector itself and remove the expiration date or extend it to the far future. I know it's illegal and unethical, but it would be a fun and interesting exercise.)

I Reflectored Reflector once and I found that the source was obfuscated. I don't think that would be a trivial task.

Interestingly, I'm pretty sure that the original wasn't obfuscated, and Red Gate obfuscated it after they received it from the original developer.

Reflector's always been obfuscated; Lutz Roeder had a paid-for version as well alongside the free one.

(You don't think the first thing we tried with Reflector was to reflect Reflector? :) )

Reflector was not always obfuscated. Old versions embedded an unobfuscated but weakly encrypted dll with the core program.

Most compiled code doesn't have debug info and internal symbols. Yet, changing something like an expiry date is often a trivial task. Obfuscation just means you'll actually have to poke around a bit instead of just searching for "isExpiryDateReached".

Reflector was written by a smart guy. IIRC the obfuscation partly consists of assemblies stored as resources in the executable assembly, and loaded dynamically. But no doubt you're right - it could be disentangled.

Better and more ethical to re-write.

well - that's unfortunate.

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