Microsoft's Inner Source: Lately we've seen the company increasingly flirt with open source. The company is opening up more and more technologies while purchasing open source companies. However, one of the company's next big moves towards open source may be even more surprising.
Microsoft is preparing to formally adopt in-house open source development methods with "Inner Source".
Inner Source / InnerSource is not a term created by Microsoft. It has been here for years.
The term Inner Source refers to the use of open source development practices and their implementation within an organization. There is already a community right now InnerSource Commons which lists more than 70 members.
The principles of open source, such as open code sharing and editing, the ability to create new code branches for more codification, code testing becoming part of the programming process, better documentation (documentation ) etc, are also Inner Source principles.
Inner Source tools and methods can be used to develop open source and / or open source projects and products. But unlike open source, these authorities are meant to be shared by groups that exist in a single organization, not necessarily with the general public.
When Microsoft bought GitHub last year, paved the way for its own teams to make more Inner Source growth.
A job search quote of Microsoft Program Manager released in November 2018 states that Microsoft was looking for someone interested in "helping teams of engineers at Microsoft use GitHub and adopt Inner Source practices."
"This person will be responsible for changes to Microsoft's internal technical systems and culture, making GitHub a collaborative platform for Microsoft product and service development teams."
Another job publishing Microsoft last week explained that a newly formed team "is preparing the Inner Source initiative to make it widespread throughout the company."
This team, which will be a member of the 1ES team (One Engineering System) of Microsoft, and will work in internal teams to understand ways in which Microsoft itself can use tools and open source processes.
And it continues:
The broader 1ES team creates the next generation of tools and practices that will make engineers throughout Microsophone more productive and help them concentrate on building excellent software. This role will be part of an initially small team that will be responsible for launching the internal source across the company.
So slowly we should not be surprised if we see Microsoft promote Inner Source to its customers through GitHub and Azure DevOps,
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