An Empirical Investigation into the Adoption of Inner Source in IT Companies: A Case Study Master’s Thesis in Software Engineering and Management NILOOFAR SAFAVI Department of Computer Science and Engineering Chalmers University of Technology University of Gothenburg Gothenburg, Sweden 2019 An Empirical Investigation into the Adoption of Inner Source in IT Companies: A Case study NILOOFAR SAFAVI Department of Computer Science and Engineering Chalmers University of Technology University of Gothenburg Göteborg, Sweden 2019 ii An Empirical Investigation into the Adoption of Inner Source in IT Companies: A Case Study NILOOFAR SAFAVI © NILOOFAR SAFAVI, 2019 Supervisor: Imed Hammouda Examiner: Eric Knaus Master’s Thesis 2019 Department of Computer Science and Engineering Chalmers University of Technology University of Gothenburg SE-412 96 Göteborg Sweden Telephone + 46 (0)31-772 1000 Cover: Inner Source in a corporation [51] iii An Empirical Investigation into the Adoption of Inner Source in IT Companies: A Case Study NILOOFAR SAFAVI Department of Computer Science and Engineering Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg Abstract Inner Source is a rather new concept and introducing it to companies involves some challenges. In this thesis, we investigate the challenges and obstacles of adopting Inner Source in a large IT company. The results are then analyzed and summarized. In addition, the company owns many products and needs to decide which products are suitable for inner sourcing purpose. The criteria for selection of the products are investigated and the results are compared to the results of the previous studies. In the final stage, we investigate a framework for adoption of Inner Source tailored to the needs of the company and compared the results to other available frameworks. Keywords: Inner Source, adoption, challenges, criteria, framework iv Acknowledgments I would like to thank Imed Hammouda, my supervisor at the university who helped me setup the project and showed me the directions to perform an industrial project using academic approaches. I am also especially thankful to Eric Knaus, my examiner for his valuable feedbacks. Finally, I would like to thank all interviewees and members of the studied projects who helped me throughout the study. Niloofar Safavi v Table of Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 Statement of the problem .............................................................................................. 1 Research Questions ....................................................................................................... 2 Aims and objectives ....................................................................................................... 2 Scope ............................................................................................................................ 2 Definitions, acronyms and abbreviations ........................................................................ 3 Main contributions ........................................................................................................ 3 Structure of the thesis ................................................................................................... 3 2. Background and related work .................................................................................... 4 Open Source .................................................................................................................. 4 Inner Source .................................................................................................................. 5 Inner Source challenges ................................................................................................. 6 Inner Source product ..................................................................................................... 7 Inner Source implementation ......................................................................................... 8 3. Research methodology ............................................................................................. 14 Design and planning .................................................................................................... 15 Preparation for data collection..................................................................................... 15 Collecting evidence ...................................................................................................... 15 Analysis ....................................................................................................................... 18 Reporting .................................................................................................................... 18 4. Results ..................................................................................................................... 19 Challenges ................................................................................................................... 19 Product ....................................................................................................................... 23 Adopting Inner Source by the company ........................................................................ 27 5. Discussion ................................................................................................................ 38 Challenges ................................................................................................................... 38 Product ....................................................................................................................... 39 Adoption model .......................................................................................................... 40 6. Conclusions .............................................................................................................. 46 Threats to validity ........................................................................................................ 46 vi Implications for research ............................................................................................. 47 Implications for practitioners ....................................................................................... 47 7. References ............................................................................................................... 48 8. Appendixes .............................................................................................................. 52 Appendix 1: Successful Open source projects ............................................................... 52 Appendix 2: Questionnaire (Guideline for interviews) ................................................... 54 Appendix 3: Candidate products for inner sourcing ....................................................... 56 vii List of Figures Figure 1-Sharma et. al framework [55] ................................................................................................. 10 Figure 2- Key factors for adopting Inner Source [17] ............................................................................ 13 Figure 3- Interviewees familiarity with OS ............................................................................................ 17 Figure 4- Interviewees familiarity with Inner Source ............................................................................ 17 Figure 5-Current products status .......................................................................................................... 20 Figure 6-Company software .................................................................................................................. 23 Figure 7 - How Gerrit works [47] ........................................................................................................... 29 Figure 8- Summary of Inner Source Challenges at the company .......................................................... 38 Figure 9- Adoption model at the company ........................................................................................... 41 Figure 10- Adoption framework by the company ................................................................................. 42 List of Tables Table 1- Inner Source challenges (Morgan et al. [24]) ............................................................................ 6 Table 2-Inner Source challenges by Stol et al. [52] ................................................................................. 6 Table 3-Differences between Infrastructure based and Project-based Inner Source [18][52] ............... 9 Table 4- Sharma et. al framework sub categories [55] ......................................................................... 11 Table 5- Stol et al. framework [52] ........................................................................................................ 12 Table 6- Interviewees roles ................................................................................................................... 16 Table 7- Product criteria according to our study vs. other studies ....................................................... 40 Table 8- Comparison between our study and Torkar et al. [56] ........................................................... 43 Table 9-comparison between my study and Stol et al. [18] study ........................................................ 44 Table 10- Relation between the proposed framework and reported challenges