research-article

Examining the Impact of Adopting Inner Source Software Practices

Authors:

Noel Carroll,

Lorraine Morgan,

Kieran ConboyAuthors Info & Claims

OpenSym '18: Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Open Collaboration

Article No.: 6, Pages 1 - 7

https://doi.org/10.1145/3233391.3233530

Published: 22 August 2018 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

Open Source software (OSS) has been highly prevalent in both practice and research. Given the value and effectiveness of OSS development to date, practitioners are keen to replicate these practices inside their respective corporations. This application of OSS practices inside the confines of a corporate entity has been coined Inner Source Software (ISS). While ISS presents many benefits, little is known about the opposing tensions that arise as a result of transitioning from a closed to an open software development environment. Such environments are increasingly under pressure to embrace more open and collaborative principles internally, while simultaneously managing operations in a tight and controlled manner. As part of this study, we conducted 20 interviews with international ISS expects across 15 global organisations. We uncover 13 core tensions that arise from the adoption of open principles in closed software practices. Based on these emerging results, we present new insights on the implementation of strategies to overcome competing tensions from openness in software development. We present some recommendations, which also call for fundamentally new research directions.

References

[1]

Lorraine Morgan, Joe Feller, and Pat Finnegan, 2011. Exploring inner source as a form of intra-organisational open innovation. European Conference on Information Systems, Helsinki.

Google Scholar

[2]

Darja Šmite, Nils Brede Moe, Aivars Šāblis, and Claes Wohlin, 2017. Software teams and their knowledge networks in large-scale software development." Information and Software Technology 86: 71--86.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

Joe Feller and Brian Fitzgerald, 2002. Understanding open source software development (pp. 143--159). London: Addison-Wesley.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

Tim O'Reilly, 2000. Open Source and OpenGL -O'Reilly Media. Retrieved June 22, 2018 from http://archive.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/ask_tim/2000/opengl_1200.html

Google Scholar

[5]

Noel Carroll, 2017. How Is Value Created Within An Inner Source Environment? In Proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Open Collaboration (p. 22). ACM, Galway.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[6]

Klaas-Jan Stol, Muhammad Ali Babar, Paris Avgeriou, and Brian Fitzgerald, 2011. A comparative study of challenges in integrating Open Source Software and Inner Source Software. Information and Software Technology 53, no. 12: 1319--1336.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[7]

Øyvind Hauge, Claudia Ayala, and Reidar Conradi, 2010. Adoption of open source software in softwareintensive organizations-A systematic literature review. Information and Software Technology 52, no. 11 (2010): 1133--1154.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[8]

Chris Huxham and Nic Beech, 2003. Contrary prescriptions: Recognizing good practice tensions in management. Organization Studies 24, no. 1: 69--93.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[9]

Wendy K Smith and Marianne W. Lewis, 2011. Toward a theory of paradox: A dynamic equilibrium model of organizing. Academy of management Review 36, no. 2: 381--403.

Google Scholar

[10]

Brian Hobbs, Monique Aubry, and Denis Thuillier, 2008. The project management office as an organisational innovation. International Journal of Project Management 26, no. 5: 547--555.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[11]

Brian Fitzgerald, 2006. The transformation of open source software. MIS Quarterly: 587--598.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[12]

Joel West and Scott Gallagher, 2006. Challenges of open innovation: the paradox of firm investment in open-source software. R&D Management 36, no. 3: 319--331.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[13]

Orla O'Dwyer, Roger Sweetman, and Kieran Conboy, 2014. Exploring control tensions in IS project portfolio management, 35th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), Auckland, 2014, pp. 1--11, 2014.

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Buchner SRiehle D(2023)The Business Impact of Inner Source and How to Quantify ItACM Computing Surveys10.1145/361164856:2(1-27)Online publication date: 29-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3611648
Dillon C(2023)Who owns this code? Examining Ownership Concepts in InnerSource Practices2023 IEEE/ACM 1st International Workshop on InnerSource Software Development (InnerSoft)10.1109/InnerSoft59330.2023.00009(2-3)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/InnerSoft59330.2023.00009
Guizani MCastro-Guzman ASarma ASteinmacher I(2023)Rules of Engagement: Why and How Companies Participate in OSS2023 IEEE/ACM 45th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)10.1109/ICSE48619.2023.00218(2617-2629)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE48619.2023.00218
Show More Cited By

Examining the Impact of Adopting Inner Source Software Practices
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems

Recommendations

What motivates software practitioners to contribute to inner source?
ESEC/FSE 2022: Proceedings of the 30th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering

Software development organizations have adopted open source development practices to support or augment their software development processes, a phenomenon referred to as inner source. Given the rapid adoption of inner source, we wonder what motivates ...
Key factors for adopting inner source

A number of organizations have adopted Open Source Software (OSS) development practices to support or augment their software development processes, a phenomenon frequently referred to as Inner Source. However the adoption of Inner Source is not a ...
How are Open Source Practices Possible within a Medical Diagnostics Company?: Developing and Testing a Maturity Model of Inner Source Implementation
OpenSym '17: Proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Open Collaboration

Open Source Software (OSS) development has seen a considerable increase in attention over the last few years. The success of various OSS projects, such as Linux and Apache, is now widely recognized. Many organizations have shown interest not only in ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

OpenSym '18: Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Open Collaboration

August 2018

208 pages

ISBN:9781450359368

DOI:10.1145/3233391

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

In-Cooperation

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 22 August 2018

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Funding Sources

Science Foundation Ireland

Conference

OpenSym '18

OpenSym '18: The 14th International Symposium on Open Collaboration

August 22 - 24, 2018

Paris, France

Acceptance Rates

OpenSym '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 27 of 38 submissions, 71%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 108 of 195 submissions, 55%

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

7
Total Citations
View Citations
181
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)15
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 13 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Buchner SRiehle D(2023)The Business Impact of Inner Source and How to Quantify ItACM Computing Surveys10.1145/361164856:2(1-27)Online publication date: 29-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3611648
Dillon C(2023)Who owns this code? Examining Ownership Concepts in InnerSource Practices2023 IEEE/ACM 1st International Workshop on InnerSource Software Development (InnerSoft)10.1109/InnerSoft59330.2023.00009(2-3)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/InnerSoft59330.2023.00009
Guizani MCastro-Guzman ASarma ASteinmacher I(2023)Rules of Engagement: Why and How Companies Participate in OSS2023 IEEE/ACM 45th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)10.1109/ICSE48619.2023.00218(2617-2629)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE48619.2023.00218
Wan ZXia XZhang YLo DZhou DChen QHassan ARoychoudhury ACadar CKim M(2022)What motivates software practitioners to contribute to inner source?Proceedings of the 30th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3540250.3549148(132-144)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3540250.3549148
Morgan LGleasure RBaiyere A(2022)Is Inner Source the Next Stage in the Agile Revolution?Co-creating for Context in the Transfer and Diffusion of IT10.1007/978-3-031-17968-6_10(130-136)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17968-6_10
de Lacerda AAguiar CLundell BGamalielsson JMorgan LRobles G(2019)FLOSS FAQ chatbot project reuseProceedings of the 15th International Symposium on Open Collaboration10.1145/3306446.3340823(1-8)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3306446.3340823
Gustavsson HBrohede MLundell BGamalielsson JMorgan LRobles G(2019)Continuous assessment in software engineering project course using publicly available data from GitHubProceedings of the 15th International Symposium on Open Collaboration10.1145/3306446.3340820(1-6)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3306446.3340820

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Recommendations

What motivates software practitioners to contribute to inner source?

Key factors for adopting inner source

How are Open Source Practices Possible within a Medical Diagnostics Company?: Developing and Testing a Maturity Model of Inner Source Implementation