Recently I’ve read Innersource Development: A Practical Guide which touches on applying principles of Open Source to an organisation.
Personally I first learned about the principles on
which in turn goes back to an article in 2012. So it is not a new concept.
That being said, the structure of the Bitsrc article has a structure that is worth imitating for a sales pitch. I feel like we can adapt it to our own initiatives.
Thanks @Ryuno-Ki. Hearing the term more often these days, I wonder:
What are opportunities and threats to Free Software?
The EU OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE STRATEGY 2020 – 2023 (PDF) mentions “inner source” 3 times.
“‘Inner source’ (the creation of working cultures based on open source) will be promoted, in order to bring teams closer to open-source working methods and encourage sharing and reuse within the organisation. This is a step towards opening up more projects as open source and sharing them with the outside world.”
This InnerSource is interesting, set up as a US non-profit, and looks like they focus on developing a branded “inner source” methodology, based on the input of their community of practice.
Note that InnerSource Commons gives a misleading representation of that, as if the EU endorses them. What they say: “The InnerSource Commons welcomes the European Commission’s new Open Source Software Strategy 2020-2023 highlighting how InnerSource (the creation of working cultures based on open source) is an integral part of a robust open source strategy and ecosystem.” Notice the difference, brand name vs. general concept.
This greatly reduces the trustworthiness of their non-profit. For instance making it wholly unclear if all the big brands listed on InnerSource Stories have any affiliation with them or were just mentioning “inner source”.
(InnerSource website (on first glance) isn’t clear on how income for their large staff is earned. I suspect that somewhere companies can buy services to get “Certified InnerSource Practicioners” trained, or something like that.)
Looking at Events page the Big Corp™ focus is clear, which usually doesn’t bode well for FOSS.
What InnerSource Commons provides is an inner source pattern library.
The List of Patterns can also be found on Github, where people can contribute.