Abstract:

Driven by the economic importance of maintaining and improving the enormous base of existing software systems, the reverse engineering of software has been of rapidly growing interest over the past decade. More and more commercial software tools support aspects of reverse engineering, and more and more researchers in academic and industrial organizations are addressing themselves to the fundamental problems of reverse engineering. In the best of all worlds, we researchers on reverse engineering would be working together toward clear goals of great economic importance. Unfortunately, it appears that we are mostly just groping around in a swamp, each looking for a bit of dry ground (whether or not it actually leads out of the swamp), and running into each other only occasionally. If we are to make rapid and effective joint progress, a number of improvements need to be made in the way we are pursuing research. This is a deliberately controversial paper presented in a confrontational manner in the hope that it will trigger lively discussion. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of their employers or funders.