White Source has released its Apache Maven plugin to the developer community with a call to programmers to use this new tool to upload and manage their personal open source inventory with management services such as license compliance checking.

Essentially then, in five words, this is SaaS open source lifecycle management. Although White Source has not gone so far as to label this SaaSFoSSALM — SaaS-based free open source software application lifecycle management.

Developers (and managers) are offered White Source’s free cloud-based solution to track, audit and report on open source components throughout the software development lifecycle.

NOTE: Apache Maven is a software project management and comprehension tool. Based on the concept of a project object model, Maven manages a project's build, reporting, and documentation from a central piece of information. In this case, the new Apache Maven plugin continuously and automatically delivers information about open source components being used to the White Source platform, without any overhead.

"Our goal is to fully automate the tracking of open source assets in the organization. We started by creating the Maven plugin for more automatic, continuous monitoring of open source components and licenses," said White Source CEO Rami Sass. "We will continue to provide additional plugins in the future and make White Source Software even easier to adopt, use, and maintain."

White Source fully supports Java and plans to support additional languages in the future. The company intends to add premium services for a monthly subscription fee.