Talk:Commercial off-the-shelf

This page has been listed on VfD, but there was no consensus to delete. It was however deleted, then when it was recreated listed for speedy. I am attempting to restore the best version. Wish me luck. Rich Farmbrough 10:40, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I disagree. VfD works by consensus, not votes. If I analyze each of the votes, I see one delete, one weak merge/redir that states "there's probably not a lot of potential for the COTS term itself," one weak keep based on the amout of links to it (which can be fixed and is not a great reason), and one move to wiktionary, essentially a delete, since that had already been done. If we're going by consensus, I see only one vote out of four for keep (but gives an insufficient reason, and even that one says "or merge/redirect") and so the consensus looks like delete. Now why was this so urgent and egregious that you couldn't take it to VfU? --Dmcdevit·t 21:51, July 18, 2005 (UTC)


 * I disagree. Deleting COTS? its a very well known term in Software Engineering. I don't know who put the jimmy neutron link there but its relevancy with COTS is open for discussion. This term definately needs to be worked out in more detail. --Eelkefolmer·t 21:13, June 08, 2006 (UTC)

COTS is not only in wide use it is also part of the regulations for software procurement in many places (government or not) and getting COTS is a priority in the supply chain management for commercial organisations Fgenolini (talk) 13:23, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

There seems to be some confusion in the Software Engineering community about what COTS actually stands for. COTS commonly means Custom-off-the-shelf, i.e. tailoring and customising existing off-the-shelf software for a specific need. For example, see the Qualifications tab of ESRI's Technical Certification at http://training.esri.com/certification/systemAssociate.cfm, which seems to imply that COTS is the opposite of non-custom. Having said that, this article does specifically describe the USA's use of the term and it is possible that usage in the USA is different from that of the rest of the world. Leostmark (talk) 22:22, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

The link to the whitepaper no longer works. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.139.122.43 (talk) 23:26, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Custom off-the-shelf
As is mentioned above, I have mostly seen the term COTS expanded as "Custom Off-the-Shelf", but it is usually in computing contexts. I suspect that there are really two usages of COTS floating around in practice, both of which can be reliably sourced. Both terms are pretty similar, in that they are both clearly off-the-shelf. I recommend creating a redirect from custom off-the-shelf to this page for now, but eventually, I think it will need to be peeled off into its own page. 70.247.162.84 (talk) 23:24, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Standard Definition of COTS The main issue that I see with this article is that the writers seem to think that COTS is a software term. In addition, the above writer wishes to redefine from the FAR definition. In fact the first few sentences properly describe COTS and then the remainder of the article ignores the history of the term and excludes the greater concept of COTS. This leads the reader to believe that the term COTS is related to software, when in fact the term has no specific connotations relative to the type of materiel or service being procured. COTS is more likely being used to procure materiel such as a tire or electrical switch than it is to procure software. This entire article should be either discarded or rewritten. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.190.231.15 (talk) 18:25, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Picture of the metaphor
How about inserting this picture that shows to non-native speakers what "off-the-shelf" means? Cheers! Syced (talk) 06:19, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Mckinsey link is broken (404). 1.132.105.108 (talk) 01:41, 29 November 2017 (UTC)