Posts by MikeyDoesn'tLike It

What DARPA wants, DARPA gets: A non-hacky way to fix bugs in legacy binaries

Re: The very first test of your "decompiled" code

I don't think that's his point.

Time will tell

I've been a software developer with a Government contractor for over 40 years and EVERY contract I've developed software for has delivered the source code as well as the executables to the Government. O&M and sustainment contracts sometimes even cause the supporting contractor to change as well and the software, both source and executables transfer with the possible exception of existing proprietary software that was used in the original development and in that case linkable libraries or executables are delivered.

So in that case I don't really see the problems that this is supposedly trying to solve.

However, more recently many contracts have used more and more COTS software as delivered systems have become more mainstream and less stove-piped. As I have seen recently myself, many of those companies no longer exist either going out of business or becoming absorbed by larger companies which, in turn, abandon their original product lines. In that case, I can see a need for this capability as it would preclude any requirement to rewrite the software from scratch with its requisite massive costs in both labor and time.

Will this actually be a solution as others have pointed out the potential licensing pitfalls with this strategy? Or will this result in the Government going back to developing its own software as before or continuing down this road? Time will tell.