What is Inner Source?
Tags: innersource, devops, codenewbie, collaboration
Published: 2021-03-05 01:43:32

Wanna know more about Inner Source? This is the post for you!

Let me explain you what Inner Source is, what it means and what problem it solves.

### Video

As usual, if you are a __visual learner__, or simply prefer to watch and listen instead of reading, here you have __the video with the whole explanation and demo__, which to be fair is much ___more complete___ than this post.

{% youtube tfPhkZ87bEY %}

([Link to the video: https://youtu.be/tfPhkZ87bEY](https://youtu.be/tfPhkZ87bEY))

If you rather prefer reading, well... let's just continue :)

### What is Inner Source?

Inner Source is basically open source but __inside a company__ or set of companies. You can imagine that it might be desirable for a company to share reusable components internally, but due to legal/monetization/other reasons they don't want to share beyond the company as open source.

### Inner Source vs Open Source

Inner Source differs from classic open source by remaining __within the view and control of a single organization__. The “_openness_” of the project extends across many teams within the organization, and this allows the organization to even have __trade secrets into the code__ without fear that they will be revealed to outsiders, while benefitting from the creativity and diverse perspectives contributed by people throughout the organization.

Often, the organization chooses to share parts of an Inner Source project with the public, effectively turning them into open source. When the technologies and management practices of open source are used internally, __moving the project into a public arena becomes much easier__.

### Inner Source as vehicle towards Open Source

Also, for companies building mostly closed source software, Inner Source can be a __great tool to help break down silos__, encourage internal collaboration, accelerate new engineer on-boarding, and identify opportunities to contribute software back to the open source world.

### The Discovery Problem

One crucial part of Inner Source is what's referred to as the "discovery" problem: how do you make sure people within the organization can discover the Inner Source projects when they start a new project that utilizes them?

To solve this problem, you have to use the proper tool for the job. While you can use basically any platform to do Inner Source, only some of the toolsets out there make it very __seamless__. This is one area in which GitHub shines, while other platforms like Azure DevOps are not that developed.

You can for example create something like the SAP Inner Source portal reference, that reads data from your GitHub organization and presents that in a very nice way

![SAP Inner Source Portal](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/wk40mxh02q7e613skll7.png)

If you want to take a look at the portal, you can find it here: [https://github.com/SAP/project-portal-for-innersource](https://github.com/SAP/project-portal-for-innersource)

### Conclusions and Announcement

This was just a very short introduction to Inner Source, but let me know in the comment section below if you want me to go deeper into the topic in another post or video.

Also, before we close, I have an announcement to make, which I'm very excited about. I've finally launched my [Patreon page](https://patreon.com/CoderDave)! You can get __exclusive content__, both posts and videos that are not posted anywhere else. You can influence the content of my [YouTube channel](https://youtube.com/CoderDave), you can have live chats and Q&A with me. But the coolest part is that you can have a __1:1 consultation with me to talk about anything DevOps, GitHub or Azure DevOps__.

![Patreon](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/kipwq1efs6aqaugqaz5q.png)

Just visit my [Patreon page](https://patreon.com/CoderDave) to see the available options available

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{% youtube tfPhkZ87bEY %}