Software reclamation

One of the major barriers to the introduction of reuse technology into the software development process is the absence of large repositories of reusable components from which manufacturers can build new generations of systems. Owing to the tremendous investment that has been made in developing systems, companies use an evolutionary approach to software development whereby the old version becomes the basis of the next generation. Owing to such costs, companies are understandably reluctant to develop completely new versions from scratch. If software reusability is to emerge as a discipline, then some mechanism whereby components are reclaimed from existing systems and transformed according to reuse criteria must be found. The authors discuss an approach designed to reclaim software components from existing systems and transform them into objects, which are inherently more reusable