Banyak negara-negara berkembang terpaksa harus melakukan "Reverse engineering" terhadap produk mesin dan lainnya agar mereka tidak tertinggal dari negara lain. Hal ini dilakukan karena mahalnya biaya "alih teknologi" yang kadang kala penuh tipuan yang dilakukan oleh negara maju terhadap negara berkembang.
India, China, Iran dan Brazil adalah negara-negara yang sedang tren melakukan strategi ini. Dulupun, US pernah melakukannay atas prosuk militer Jerman dan Uni Sovyet dan begitu juga sebaliknya. Seharusnya pemerintah menjadikan Tegal, dengan segala infrastrukturnya sebagai pusat "Reverse engineering" di Indonesia. Pertama mungkin menjiplak, lalu setelah diketahui pusat inti pergerakan mesinnya lalu dikembangkan ke arah yang lebuh baik sesuai kebutuhan lokal.
Apa itu "Reverse engineering":
Reverse engineering (RE) is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object or system through analysis of its structure, function and operation. It often involves taking something (e.g., a mechanical device, electronic component, or software program) apart and analyzing its workings in detail to be used in maintenance, or to try to make a new device or program that does the same thing without copying anything from the original.
Reverse engineering has its origins in the analysis of hardware for commercial or military advantage. The purpose is to deduce design decisions from end products with little or no additional knowledge about the procedures involved in the original production. The same techniques are currently being researched for application to legacy software systems, not for industrial or defense ends, but rather to replace incorrect, incomplete, or otherwise unavailable documentation.
Reasons for reverse engineering:
* Interoperability.
* Lost documentation: Reverse engineering often is done because the documentation of a particular device has been lost (or was never written), and the person who built it is no longer available. Integrated circuits often seem to have been designed on obsolete, proprietary systems, which means that the only way to incorporate the functionality into new technology is to reverse-engineer the existing chip and then re-design it.
* Product analysis. To examine how a product works, what components it consists of, estimate costs, and identify potential patent infringement.
* Security auditing.
* Removal of copy protection, circumvention of access restrictions.
* Creation of unlicensed/unapproved duplicates.
* Academic/learning purposes.
* Curiosity
* Competitive technical intelligence (understand what your competitor is actually doing versus what they say they are doing)
* Learning: Learn from others mistakes. Do not make the same mistakes that others have already made and subsequently corrected
