3 ms·

Inner Source Commons

15 points by softwaredoug 3y ago

zabzonk 3y ago
> InnerSource Commons is the world's largest community of InnerSource practitioners and how big is that? five? ten? this is a zero-content advert.
- richbell 3y ago
  It's pretty popular amongst larger enterprises and financial institutions.
  - pyrale 3y ago
    I guess the practice is common (I have worked in such contexts in the past - no issue with the idea, although you'd be hard pressed to find a manager that understood the need for maintainer time, or maintainers in general in products). However, the linked site is extremely misleading. I had to click 3 links and watch a video just to make sure what the website was about, and in the end I was surprised it's not some kind of scam to sell consulting. I'm still not convinced tbh.
    - richbell 3y ago
      It's been a while since I've actually read the site; I'll admit it's quite vague. The main thing worth reading, imo, is this ebook from 2015. The rest looks like a lot of hot air. https://innersourcecommons.org/learn/books/getting-started-with-innersource/ https://innersourcecommons.org/learn/books/getting-started-w...
ta988 3y ago
So is it about trying to mimic what the free software devs do and hope that it will provide the same outcome? Sounds like dressing like your favorite rock star to try to play guitar better.
mistrial9 3y ago
so this is "shots across the bow" for the Enterprise push to disembowel Libre software?
vrnvu 3y ago
My company, Adevinta, adopted this last year. As you can imagine, some higher-ups pushed this idea as an initiative to improve our efficiency as a company. Let's improve our tech culture! We are going to benefit from less code duplication, more collaboration between teams, and we are going to build reusable software across teams. What do you think happened after one year of pushing this idea down our throats? Exactly. Nothing. Despite months of documenting the initiative, organizing workshops and brainstorming sessions, and managers pushing engineers to make pull requests to other teams' codebases, no progress was made. The sad thing is that the higher-ups and managers that wasted our time are not going to hold any accountability or responsibility for the decision... Like it usually happens in big companies.
- klysm 3y ago
  I avoid shared code. It makes changing it more than twice as hard
- ssss11 3y ago
  Sounds like change management didn’t work. Culture shifts never work without a large amount of change management and someone who sponsored the initiative should be accountable.
fuzzy2 3y ago
Haha, Inner Source. I see this at a particular client of ours. They use it as a way for teams to dodge change/bugfix requests. They say “oh yeah just create a pull request” and then simply not review it if you actually dare. The non-hostile take is of course if you’re too busy to consider the change request you are also too busy to review the pull request. Not sure if working on PRs is incentivized at all.
Nullabillity 3y ago
Wow, this site reads like an engineering-focused clone of https://web.archive.org/web/20050131093151/http://www.mintrubbing.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050131093151/http://www.mintru....
- richbell 3y ago
  This is hilarious. Thank you for sharing.

15 points by softwaredoug 3y ago

> InnerSource Commons is the world's largest community of InnerSource practitioners and how big is that? five? ten? this is a zero-content advert.

richbell 3y ago
It's pretty popular amongst larger enterprises and financial institutions.
- pyrale 3y ago
  I guess the practice is common (I have worked in such contexts in the past - no issue with the idea, although you'd be hard pressed to find a manager that understood the need for maintainer time, or maintainers in general in products). However, the linked site is extremely misleading. I had to click 3 links and watch a video just to make sure what the website was about, and in the end I was surprised it's not some kind of scam to sell consulting. I'm still not convinced tbh.
  - richbell 3y ago
    It's been a while since I've actually read the site; I'll admit it's quite vague. The main thing worth reading, imo, is this ebook from 2015. The rest looks like a lot of hot air. https://innersourcecommons.org/learn/books/getting-started-with-innersource/ https://innersourcecommons.org/learn/books/getting-started-w...

ta988 3y ago

So is it about trying to mimic what the free software devs do and hope that it will provide the same outcome? Sounds like dressing like your favorite rock star to try to play guitar better.

mistrial9 3y ago

so this is "shots across the bow" for the Enterprise push to disembowel Libre software?

vrnvu 3y ago

My company, Adevinta, adopted this last year. As you can imagine, some higher-ups pushed this idea as an initiative to improve our efficiency as a company. Let's improve our tech culture! We are going to benefit from less code duplication, more collaboration between teams, and we are going to build reusable software across teams. What do you think happened after one year of pushing this idea down our throats? Exactly. Nothing. Despite months of documenting the initiative, organizing workshops and brainstorming sessions, and managers pushing engineers to make pull requests to other teams' codebases, no progress was made. The sad thing is that the higher-ups and managers that wasted our time are not going to hold any accountability or responsibility for the decision... Like it usually happens in big companies.

klysm 3y ago
I avoid shared code. It makes changing it more than twice as hard
ssss11 3y ago
Sounds like change management didn’t work. Culture shifts never work without a large amount of change management and someone who sponsored the initiative should be accountable.

fuzzy2 3y ago

Haha, Inner Source. I see this at a particular client of ours. They use it as a way for teams to dodge change/bugfix requests. They say “oh yeah just create a pull request” and then simply not review it if you actually dare. The non-hostile take is of course if you’re too busy to consider the change request you are also too busy to review the pull request. Not sure if working on PRs is incentivized at all.

Nullabillity 3y ago

Wow, this site reads like an engineering-focused clone of https://web.archive.org/web/20050131093151/http://www.mintrubbing.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050131093151/http://www.mintru....

richbell 3y ago
This is hilarious. Thank you for sharing.