WhiteSource

Good supplement to other SAST tools for "shift left" security.

Pros:

Easy integration with Azure DevOps and Mend for Github and the fact that you can run as a task during the pipeline but you don't have to see the output from a CLI since they provide a tab on the pipeline run to see a good report on used libraries and vulnerabilities.

Cons:

Other tools have auto fixing which is not a need but good to have. Auto-fixing is not always "auto" and might need review which doesn't make it a big con.

WhiteSource Review

Pros:

WhiteSource give you the ability to scan open source packages within your source code. The ability to integrate it with Azure pipelines is a huge plus

Cons:

Duplicated result for same packages and within the same project

Tons of false positives, prepare to spend hours fixing it manually

Comments: After much manual configuration, a nicely formatted output that looks reputable. I could have just made my own in excel a lot faster.

Pros:

Fast, quick reviews of your code. They do a good job of putting all the relevant reports and dashboards in front of you quickly. Once you manually fix everything, it can look really good.

Cons:

The false positives are awful. I had to spend hours and hours manually fixing everything it mis-identified - dozens of libraries and thousands of source files. If you use a library not in its database... too bad. You can make a support request and wait for them to enter it for you, whenever they get around to it. The search is pretty awful. There is some kind of syntax to using it but when I asked our account rep, she couldn't give me any documentation on it. You will frequently see results like "openssl-v0_9_8" in your search, but if you type "openssl" it will vanish and not come up. Don't ever both trying to search for a version, it doesn't work. This results in a lot of time scrolling through very large lists. Naming schemes are random and follow no established pattern. For a good half of all libraries, they have not assigned a license. Guess who gets to go google search them all? You, the user! Isn't the point of this tool to help me identify the licensing? UI navigation is challenging. Back button will take you to a different place than you were almost every time. You'll love the dashboard... because you have to go back to it roughly every 5 minutes and start over. No great system for notes/todos/reminders. When you have to fix 60 libraries, it's hard to remember what you want to do with each one.

FOSS lifecycle management with Whitesource

Comments: Using Whitesource to manage the process of analysing FOSS for a large product with hundreds of opensource dependencies.
Makes life much easier and helps you cover all dependencies much more accurately. Some processes are still a bit course (though improved dramatically over the past 18 months)
Refresh performance might be a bit slow when there are very large dependency lists. Best product out there for FOSS lifecycle management

Easy to use. Saves tons of time.

Comments: We used to document it all manually. Now its done easily and effectively. Not to mention that we missed many things, so with this we were able to fix some small issues before they become big issues....

Pros:

easy inexpensive very comprehensive no more hassle

work with it for a long time still place to improve.

Comments: It aggregates my licenses in one centralized place. The software helps me to generate the reports for many requests that I have inside my organization. It also helps me to identify the changes between versions and compare them.

License Management in the cloud

Comments: I use the free cloud based service of White Source and it is pretty well done. Things get done quickly and easy and the software helps me to track open source licences. There is nothing to complain about it!