Certifying off-the-shelf software components

Abstract

Software components are often delivered in "black boxes" as executable objects whose licenses forbid decompilation back to source code. Often source code can be licensed, but the cost makes doing so prohibitive. We therefore have developed a methodology for determining the quality of off-the-shelf (OTS) components using a set of black box analyses. This methodology will provide developers with information useful for choosing components and for defending themselves legally against someone else's imperfect OTS components.