He recently opened a project, filling in the description and proposed name. The process has a big checklist for opening a new project, including the “At Mention” feature where everyone on the team gets notified with a list of tasks to complete immediately when the project is open. He explained with an example of GitHub’s innersource process for opening up a new project.
“With the old model of enterprise, the focus is ‘we just want to get things working, get it done and get it out the door.’ Whereas with innersource you are thinking about ‘what will the experience be with other people you are interacting with during this project,’” said Brandon Keepers, GitHub’s open source lead, in the same interview. Speaking in a recent interview, Kakul Srivastava, vice president of product at GitHub, said managing innersource boils down to two basic tenants: What’s the process for people coming in and out of this project? And anyone on the project can find any information about any piece of the project.
“Properly implemented, the results can be dramatic – harnessing the energy and passion of your developers while helping drive software reuse and increased ROI in your organization…It also gives your developers freedom to show you what they can do when they are free to innovate.” Innersource? So how does this work, exactly? For the better.Įnter “innersource,” defined way back in 2000 by the Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Publishing, calling it “the use of open source development techniques within the corporation.”īack in 2012, when innersourcing was beginning to gain traction, Red Hat expanded the definition: But those who have seen the power of open source are beginning to change things. Practices long held to be true are strictly upheld, even if they are no longer working.
Projects are built, software is written, documented and maintained, lives are made easier, the gods of coding are appeased until you get behind the firewall of a corporation.īehind firewalls, the old guard holds the power.
With the explosion of open source code sharing in recent years, engineers, developers, and maintainers have embraced this new way of having the community engaged to make the code better for all.