Understanding the InnerSource Checklist

Chapter 1. Why InnerSource?

A group of us in the open source community feel strongly that we can make work better by introducing and adopting open source principles and processes to larger enterprises. This includes attributes that benefit the company (faster development, better cross-team collaboration, more documentation) and an ethos that benefits the workers (mentoring processes, accountability, and a supportive community).

It’s a big goal. We started an organization called InnerSource Commons to share information and ideas among organizations working with InnerSource. We talk often about perfection being the enemy of action. That’s one reason we focus on the smallest possible steps to effect change.

At the Commons, we also believe that when companies fundamentally understand many of the methods of open source, they can be confident and productive actors in the open source community. InnerSource is a way to bring them in while respecting their limits. InnerSource opens teams and departments within a company, but does not release proprietary information. It has been shown to be effective at reducing silos, increasing cross-stack understanding, and even stimulating innovation.

In good open source tradition, we are writing this book to share some of what we in the InnerSource community are doing to bring open source tools and methodologies to the enterprise environment. At the end, we present a checklist that quickly lays out the tasks that different parts of an organization ...