Copyright Aussiegall / Flickr
Unfortunately I have just found out that my favorite (free) obfuscator and library packager Eazfuscator has stopped offering a free version. Not only that but the license for the paid version is $399 for the first year and then $149 per year after that for each developer. While I am sure that Oleksiy Gapotchenko and his team are going to make some money on this they are also alienating a large portion of their potential buyers who have money but won’t accept such a gigantic price increase going from $0 to $1995 for a team of five developers! Thats pretty hefty…
Eazfuscator will go from being top of mind for many developers interested in this field to just another really expensive obfuscation tool. Reflector, the .Net decompiler, had a similar story. It was the tool to use for decompilation, then Red Gate purchased it promising to always provide a free download, today you cannot download it for free. So much for that promise… Today if you want a decompiler and your not looking for a big brand name then go with ILSpy, it is open source, freeand does more or less what Reflector does. I think the same will happen with Eazfuscator unless they release different versions with alternate price points. Sooner or later someone will step up on one of the numerous open source obfuscators and just blow us away the same way that Oleksiy did in 2008 when he release Eazfuscator for free!
Great words sir. Also true.
So have you found any free/reasonably priced obfuscators yet?
everyone wants free tools, but the good tools need time and time costs money.
If you have made a donation at the time when it was free (like I did) then you could get it for 79$.