Understanding the InnerSource Checklist

Chapter 2. What InnerSource Is and Isn’t

TL;DR

Too often, enterprise culture wants to change the definition of InnerSource to something more familiar. We must help enterprise stakeholders create clear practices and definitions in order to maintain the culture of open source as much as possible while still highlighting the benefits to the enterprise.

One of the major problems we have encountered when implementing InnerSource has been, at its root, a vocabulary problem. After we completed several successful InnerSource projects, we noticed that many people began using the word InnerSource in a simplistic, degenerate manner. Probably the most damaging misunderstanding was that InnerSource meant outsourcing work from a busy team to another that presumably had more capacity. In general, it’s easy to fall into the fallacy of thinking that effective processes are just about following certain procedures or using certain tools, without regard for the culture that makes success possible.

Discussing the problems caused by this vocabulary issue became a bonding moment for all of us at the InnerSource Commons. Many members of the Commons want to focus on the larger problems of culture change, and the distorted definitions of Innersource were emblematic of the problems they are fighting. InnerSource goes much farther than simple processes or tools, and sometimes that makes definitions more difficult to communicate in an enterprise environment.

The vocabulary issue might sound minor, but we’ve ...