InnerSource means cultivating an open source-like culture within a company and creating a culture of transparent collaboration.
This concept was proposed by Tim O’Reilly in 2000 as an innovative idea.
While open source involves sharing source code globally, InnerSource aims to share source code on a large scale within a company.
As companies grow larger, walls between departments and products can emerge, making collaboration difficult.
InnerSource is a groundbreaking effort to solve these challenges by creating a culture of sharing across the entire organization.
Source code is made open within the organization, and anyone can freely access it. This allows developers to reference and learn from other teams’ code. Knowledge sharing becomes active, leading to overall skill improvement.
Not only the code but also the discussion process is made public. In other words, how decisions were made is transparent. This allows developers from other teams to easily participate, and the project is recognized as a shared asset across the organization.
Prioritized support is provided to make it easier for new developers to participate. By following the contributions of guest teams and lowering the barriers to entry, new contributions to the project continue to emerge.
Contribution to the project is not forced.
Support from the project is also voluntary.
Each team respects and collaborates with each other to drive development forward.
The InnerSource community provides resources to help learn about InnerSource in Japan.
Here are some representative resources where you can learn about InnerSource in Japanese.
Join the Slack community to exchange information and ask questions about InnerSource.