| abstract | - COTS software is used 'as-is.' COTS products are designed to be easily installed and configured to interoperate with existing system components. Almost all software bought by the average computer user and much of the software used by the U.S. Government and the DoD is COTS. Examples include operating systems, database management systems, email servers, application servers, and office product suites. Because it is mass-produced, one of the major advantages of COTS software is the relatively low cost of acquiring, maintaining and achieving technology refresh. Given these low costs and the competitive forces at work, COTS software producers may or may not know, manage or track the provenance of their software, except to the extent needed to ensure that the necessary licenses are obtained for embedded components. In addition, they generally do not make source code available, so supplier identity and software content is often blurred by the reuse of legacy code, subcontracting, outsourcing, and use of Open Source Software (OSS).
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