Despite decades of research on OO programming languages and methods, widespread reuse of design and components has not yet materialized. The main thesis of this position paper is that without a concentrated focus on fundamental design patterns underlying software systems, widespread reuse based on OO techniques will remain elusive. This is a serious problem for mission-/life-critical domains (such as telecommunications, distributed medical imaging, and electronic commerce systems), where developing complex software systems from scratch is prohibitively expensive and error-prone.