What motivates software practitioners to contribute to inner source?
Abstract
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.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{Wan-al:FSE22,
author = {Zhiyuan Wan and
Xin Xia and
Yun Zhang and
David Lo and
Daibing Zhou and
Qiuyuan Chen and
Ahmed E. Hassan},
title = {What motivates software practitioners to contribute to inner source?},
booktitle = {{ESEC/SIGSOFT} {FSE}},
pages = {132--144},
publisher = {{ACM}},
year = {2022},
}