An investigation into inner source software development: Preliminary findings from a systematic literature review

Given the value and effectiveness of open source software development to date, practitioners are keen to replicate these practices inside their respective corporations. This application of open source practices inside the confines of a corporate entity has been coined inner source software development. However, while organisations have found ways to directly benefit from revenue streams as a result of leveraging open source practices internally, the current research on inner source is scattered among different areas. Thus gaining clarity on the state-of-the-art in inner source research is challenging. In particular, there is no systematic literature review of known research to date on inner source. We address this challenge by presenting a systematic literature review that identifies, critically evaluates and integrates the findings of 29 primary studies on inner source. Case study approach is the common research approach undertaken in the area. We also identified 8 frameworks/methods, models and tools proposed in the literature to support inner source, as well as a set of benefits and challenges associated with inner source. We envision future work to perform deeper analysis and synthesis on the empirical research on inner source software development.