Technical Report: An Example Charter for Inner Source Programs

Abstract: Inner source software development is firm-internal software development that uses the principles of open source software development to collaborate across intra-organizational boundaries that would otherwise hinder any such collaboration. Inner source breaks down the barriers to collaboration across development silos by setting up an internal ecosystem of readily available software components. To get started with inner source, companies need to define their goals and then set up a governance structure for an inner source program and the projects within to reach those goals. This governance structure is often codified in the form of a charter document. This technical report presents an example charter for an inner source program. The goal is for companies to be able to copy and adjust this charter for their own needs. Towards this purpose, the charter leaves open the many decisions to be made, but outlines the options that any company needs to decide upon when establishing an inner source program.

Keywords: Inner source, inner source charter

Reference: Riehle, D. (2016). An Example Charter for Inner Source Programs. Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Dept. of Computer Science, Technical Reports, CS-2016-05, August 2016.

The paper is available as a PDF file.