InnerSource is the use of
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
software development
Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development invol ...
best practices and the establishment of an
open source-like culture within organizations for the development of its non-open-source and/or
proprietary software
Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and ...
. The term was coined by
Tim O'Reilly
Tim O'Reilly (born 6 June 1954) is the founder of O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates). He popularised the terms open source and Web 2.0.
Education and early life
Born in County Cork, Ireland, Tim O'Reilly moved to San Francisco, ...
in 2000 in his column.
Motivation
Open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
is recognized to be capable of delivering high quality software. Furthermore, the
open collaboration
Open collaboration is any "system of innovation or production that relies on goal-oriented yet loosely coordinated participants who interact to create a product (or service) of economic value, which is made available to contributors and noncontribu ...
in open source enables collaboration even between competitors (e.g.
ARM and
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
working on
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ...
on merit-based decisions).
Consequently, software developing organizations want to benefit from its outcomes (the software components and tools), but also from the development practices exercised and established in the open source world.
Used open source practices
Besides several practices established in
foundations
Foundation may refer to:
* Foundation (nonprofit), a type of charitable organization
** Foundation (United States law), a type of charitable organization in the U.S.
** Private foundation, a charitable organization that, while serving a good cause ...
such as
Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) to support a number of open source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the A ...
,
Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit technology consortium founded in 2000 as a merger between Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group to standardize Linux, support its growth, and promote its commercial adoption. Addit ...
, and
Eclipse Foundation
The Eclipse Foundation AISBL is an independent, Europe-based not-for-profit corporation that acts as a steward of the Eclipse open source software development community, with legal jurisdiction in the European Union. It is an organization suppo ...
, InnerSource and open source projects require
open collaboration
Open collaboration is any "system of innovation or production that relies on goal-oriented yet loosely coordinated participants who interact to create a product (or service) of economic value, which is made available to contributors and noncontribu ...
, open communication, and a proper
quality assurance
Quality assurance (QA) is the term used in both manufacturing and service industries to describe the systematic efforts taken to ensure that the product(s) delivered to customer(s) meet with the contractual and other agreed upon performance, design ...
.
Open collaboration
All required development artifacts (e.g. code, documentation,
issue tracker, etc.) have to be accessible for all employees of a company leveraging InnerSource. Central
software forges are an essential tool for implementing open collaboration.
Based on the principles of
open collaboration
Open collaboration is any "system of innovation or production that relies on goal-oriented yet loosely coordinated participants who interact to create a product (or service) of economic value, which is made available to contributors and noncontribu ...
(
egalitarian
Egalitarianism (), or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds from the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all hum ...
,
meritocratic
Meritocracy (''merit'', from Latin , and ''-cracy'', from Ancient Greek 'strength, power') is the notion of a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people based on talent, effort, and achieve ...
, and self-organizing) every contributor who is willing to help an InnerSource project is typically welcome. Contributions to InnerSource projects are typically judged meritocratically based on the value they bring to the project.
Meritocracy
Meritocracy (''merit'', from Latin , and ''-cracy'', from Ancient Greek 'strength, power') is the notion of a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people based on talent, effort, and achiev ...
can also be enabled by open communication as decisions are discussed publicly. Although an organization does not necessarily become completely self-organizing to adopt InnerSource, InnerSource allows individuals, organizational units, and project communities a higher degree of self-organization.
Open communication
InnerSource projects and programs rely on open communication to make all communication openly accessible for all employees. Open communication is communication that is public (within the company), written, archived, and complete. As consequence of this property, the communication is asynchronous. The goal is to allow any individual or party that has stake or interest in an InnerSource project to participate in the communication. As open communication discussions are archived, a detailed documentation of the software is passively gathered that allows one to go back and revisit historic discussions and decisions.
Quality assurance through separation of contribution from integration
A dedicated
code review
Code review (sometimes referred to as peer review) is a software quality assurance activity in which one or several people check a program mainly by viewing and reading parts of its source code, and they do so after implementation or as an interr ...
and the separation of contributors and
committer
A committer is an individual who is permitted to modify the source code of a software project, that will be used in the project's official releases. To contribute source code to most large software projects, one must make modifications and then " ...
s (integrators, developers with write access) assures the quality of an open source project, and, therefore, also for an InnerSource project.
Benefits
Beyond the quality attributes of open source software the following benefits are reported:
; More efficient and effective development
:* Faster
Time-to-Market
In commerce, time to market (TTM) is the length of time it takes from a product being conceived until its being available for sale. The reason that time to market is so important is since being late erodes the addressable market into which prod ...
:* Reduced development costs
; Overcoming organizational unit boundaries
:* Cost and risk sharing among organizational units
:* Collaboration across organizational unit boundaries
:* Program-wide information exchange
; More successful reuse
:* Use of competences missing at component providers
:* Independence between reusers and providers
:* Relief of component providers
; Better software product
:* increased
code quality
:* More innovative development
; More flexible utilization of developers
:* Simplified developer deployment
:* Collaboration of detached developers
; Enhanced knowledge management
:* Community-based learning
:* Openness and availability of knowledge
; Higher employee motivation
Prevalence
Among others the following companies are known for adopting InnerSource:
*
HP
*
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide.
Red Hat has become ass ...
*
Philips
Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...
*
Lucent
Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the dives ...
*
Nokia
Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...
*
IBM
*
DTE
*
Robert Bosch
Robert Bosch (23 September 1861 – 12 March 1942) was a German industrialist, engineer and inventor, founder of Robert Bosch GmbH.
Biography
Bosch was born in Albeck, a village to the northeast of Ulm in southern Germany as the eleventh of ...
*
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronic ...
*
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...
*
SAP
Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant.
Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a separ ...
*
Trend Micro
is an American-Japanese multinational cyber security software company with global headquarters in Tokyo, Japan and Irving, Texas, United State.Other regional headquarters and R&D centers are located around East Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and ...
*
PayPal
PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...
*
Capital One
Capital One Financial Corporation is an American bank holding company specializing in credit cards, auto loans, banking, and savings accounts, headquartered in McLean, Virginia with operations primarily in the United States. It is on the list o ...
*
Amdocs
Amdocs ( he, אמדוקס) is a multinational corporation that was founded in Israel and currently headquartered in Chesterfield, Missouri, with support and development centers located worldwide. The company specializes in software and services ...
*
Skyscanner
Skyscanner is a metasearch engine and travel agency based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The site is available in over 30 languages and is used by 100 million people per month. The company lets people research and book travel options for their trip ...
*
Comcast
Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...
*
T-Mobile
T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic (T-Mobile Czech Republic), Poland (T-Mobile Polska), the United States (T-Mobile ...
*
Siemens
*
Walmart
Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarte ...
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Key factors for adopting InnerSource
InnerSource can be a promising approach for large organizations that develop software. However, it may not be appropriate in all settings. The following nine factors, grouped in three categories, can be consulted to gauge the extent to which InnerSource may be appropriate.
Product factors
* Seed product to attract a community
* Multiple stakeholders for a variety of contributions
* Modularity to attract contributors and users
Process and Tools factors
* Practices that support
The Cathedral and the Bazaar, "Bazaar-style" development
* Practices that support
The Cathedral and the Bazaar, "Bazaar-style" quality assurance
* Standardization of tools to facilitate collaboration
Organization and Community factors
* Coordination and leadership to support the emergence of an internal meritocracy
* Transparency to open up the organization
* Management support and motivation to involve people
References
{{reflist
Free software culture and documents
Software development process
Software project management