What motivates software practitioners to contribute to inner source?

• Main Authors: WAN, Zhiyuan, XIA, Xin, ZHANG, Yun, LO, David, ZHOU, Daibing, CHEN, Qiuyuan, HASSAN, Ahmed E.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2022
• Subjects: Inner source; Motivation; Software development; Open collaboration; Internal open source; Databases and Information Systems
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/7695; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/8698/viewcontent/What.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

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 software practitioners to contribute to inner source projects. We followed a mixed-methods approach--a qualitative phase of interviews with 20 interviewees, followed by a quantitative phase of an exploratory survey with 124 respondents from 13 countries across four continents. Our study uncovers practitioners' motivation to contribute to inner source projects, as well as how the motivation differs from what motivates practitioners to participate in open source projects. We also investigate how software practitioners' motivation impacts their contribution level and continuance intention in inner source projects. Based on our findings, we outline directions for future research and provide recommendations for organizations and software practitioners.