Open and inner source

The success of open source lies in its open and collaborative culture. Getting the right people to voluntarily collaborate over a big distance asynchronously can help solve a problem in the best way possible. The principles are as follows:

• Open collaboration
• Open communication
• Code reviews

Applying these principles to proprietary software within an organization is called inner source. This term is credited to Tim O'Reilly from 2000. Inner source can be a great way to break down silos and foster strong collaboration across teams and products.

But like open source and open development, just making your code available is not sufficient to create an inner source culture. Many success factors influence whether the inner source approach can succeed:

• Modular product architecture: If you have a big, monolithic architecture, this will keep people from contributing. Also, the quality of the code, the documentation, and how fast you...