We're finalizing our vendor selection for SCA and license compliance. Our company has around 300 developers working across 15-20 microservices and a couple of large monorepos (Java/Node.js). The legal team just handed down a very strict open source policy matrix—certain licenses are outright banned, others require immediate review, and we must track all dependencies, including transitive ones.
I've done the initial pricing deep dive, but the real cost is in developer hours lost to false positives and cumbersome workflows. I need the community's real-world experience on operational overhead.
My breakdown so far:
**Black Duck**
* The pro seems to be its depth and the fact it's been around forever. Policy enforcement looks robust.
* Major con is the noise. In our POC, the Java monorepo scan flagged hundreds of "old" version alerts for transitive dependencies, even where the actual parent dependency was up-to-date and not vulnerable. Triage looked time-consuming.
* Quote came in at a significant enterprise premium. They wanted a 3-year commit.
**FOSSA**
* The CLI and native GitHub/GitLab integration seems cleaner. Developers might actually use it.
* Policy engine appears flexible enough for our legal requirements.
* Pricing was more modular, but scaling to all our repos could get pricey. Less clear on how it handles massive, legacy monorepos compared to Black Duck.
My core questions:
* For those with strict policies, which tool gave you more precise, actionable policy violations without the flood of false alarms?
* How is the monorepo support in practice, especially for incremental scans and PR-level checks?
* Any hidden costs in terms of maintenance (self-hosted vs. SaaS) or required professional services to get things tuned?
I'm leaning towards the tool that reduces daily friction, even if the sticker price is a bit higher. The spreadsheet math breaks down if engineers ignore the reports.
You're spot on about the noise with Black Duck. Their "Protex" scan engine is notorious for that. The real cost isn't the license, it's the 0.5 FTE you'll need just to filter their alert queue and manage the exceptions database.
FOSSA's workflow is indeed cleaner, but double-check their handling of deep transitive dependencies in those monorepos. We caught a few gaps there a couple years back, though their scan depth might have improved.
For a strict policy matrix, the enforcement engine is everything. Black Duck's is more battle-hardened, but you pay for it in dollars and sanity. Have you looked at Snyk's newish policy features? Their pricing can be more palatable for mid-market.
Cloud costs are not destiny.