Research Paper: A Research Model for the Economic Assessment of Inner Source Software Development
Abstract: Inner source is the use of open-source practices within companies. It enables more efficient software development, shortens time-to-market, and lowers costs through increased company-internal collaboration. While existing studies examine social and organizational impact factors on inner source adoption, only a few have looked at measuring and economically assessing inner source. This article presents an overview of current research regarding inner source, its measurement, economic assessment, and impact on businesses and their processes. Based on a systematic literature review we build a research model for economic inner source assessment. This research model shows thematic dependencies between the economic impact of inner source and its measurement. Additionally, it proposes research questions and hypotheses on measuring, economically assessing, and subsequently adopting inner source.
Keywords: Inner source, open source, economic assessment, systematic literature review, thematic analysis, research model.
Reference: Stefan Buchner & Dirk Riehle. 2023. A Research Model for the Economic Assessment of Inner Source Software Development. In proceedings of the 56th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2023), forthcoming. Maui, USA.
A preprint of the paper is available as PDF.