Do reference architectures can contribute to standardizing variability management tools?

Variability Management (VM) is one of the core activities for the success of software reuse. Several VM tools developed in academia and industry support mass customization of new software products and decrease time to market. Despite of a signi cant number of VM tools, in most cases, industry has adopted different techniques for managing variability, including producing their own tools. Such a heterogeneity provides difficulties in establishing VM, product customization and derivation, and standardization. From another perspective, reference architectures (RA) are a special type of software architecture as it encompasses specific domain knowledge, making it easier the development, standardization and evolution of software systems. Concepts from reference architectures can mitigate the lacking of VM tools standardization. Therefore, this position paper presents a vision towards supporting architectural standardization of VM tools, through reference architectures, for achieving a well-recognized understanding of such a domain and promoting reuse of design expertise. In this context, the main contribution of this paper is providing a discussion with regard to reference architectures and variability management tools towards supporting answering the following research question: \Do reference architectures can contribute to standardizing VM tools?". Such standardization is useful as it fosters interoperability and reuse.