InnerSource Commons "Official" Blog

[yuhattor]

Background

Following our previous discussions in issue #774, there is a clear need for a dedicated space to publish official Foundation content. The InnerSourceCommons.org website currently lacks a proper blog section for publishing important Foundation records and fact-based content.

Current Gap

We've identified a critical gap: there is currently no appropriate place to publish important Foundation content such as:

• InnerSource 25th anniversary articles
• ISC 10th anniversary articles
• Official event reports and presentations
• Fact-based company case studies
• New pattern announcements

Proposal

I propose implementing a blog section on InnerSourceCommons.org that will serve as the official publishing platform for Foundation records and fact-based content. This would be distinct from casual content or opinion pieces, which are better suited for newsletters or other channels.

Content Focus [Fact-based content]

The blog should include:

• InnerSource 25th anniversary articles written by members
• ISC 10th anniversary articles written by members
• Gathering event reports
• Conference presentation reports by regular members
• Carefully selected fact-based company case studies
• Announcements of new patterns (mature or seeking participation)
• ISPO docs reports (achievement reports)
• Articles by people invited by members (providing endorsements)

Content to Exclude

The blog should not include:

• Brief content better suited for newsletters
• Opinion / Unproven practices ("this is what happened when we implemented it")
• InnerSource hypotheses or speculative content
• "Hero of the month" style content
• One that endorses the individual
• Content difficult to control quality. (It's easy to review “factual or not” during a review, but not everyone can review “looks good or not,” or they'll get an op-ed.)

Future Considerations (not initial scope)

• Participatory articles by non-Foundation members
• Republishing of newsletters

Technical Implementation

I recommend using the approach demonstrated in PR #775 as a starting point, which provides a lightweight implementation that supports our needs.

Timeline

I plan to begin implementation in 2 weeks. This will allow time for:

1. Final feedback on this proposal
2. Finalizing the content governance model
3. Identifying initial contributors for launch content

Next Steps

1. Confirm blog governance and review process
2. Finalize technical approach
3. Create initial content plan with specific articles
4. Launch with 3-5 high-quality foundation-focused articles

Questions for Discussion

• Who should be the initial Trusted Committers for this blog?
• What should be our first 3-5 articles to demonstrate the blog's purpose?
• Should we create explicit guidelines for what qualifies as "fact-based" vs opinion content?

cc: @CiaraFlanagan @rrrutledge @spier @clcoffey @dellagustin @jeffabailey

[spier]

How about content like ISC announcements like these:

https://innersourcecommons.org/about/announcements/

Should they become part of the blog as well?

[yuhattor]

I think announcement should be the place to report new personnel and other changes, summit announcements, etc. Announcements should basically always come to the top throughout the year.

I think the 10th anniversary article should look something like this: there is no need to combine the 10th anniversary into a single article; it is a good idea to have a few articles on the 10th anniversary, but not a lot of them 😉

• Danese - Looking Back as a Founder: 10 Years of InnerSource Commons / A Decade of InnerSource: Reflections from the Beginning / From Spark to Movement: The InnerSource Commons Journey
• Tim O'Reilly - InnerSource at 25: The AI Revolution and Open Collaboration / A Quarter Century of InnerSource: Where We Go Next / Open Principles in the AI Era: Reflections on 25 Years of InnerSource
• Isable - The Apache Way, InnerSource, and Beyond / The Evolution from Apache Way to InnerSource / Open Governance: Lessons from Apache to InnerSource
• Sebastian - The History of InnerSource Patterns / Patterns as Community Knowledge: A Decade of Evolution / How Patterns Shaped the InnerSource Movement
• Klaas Jan Stol - InnerSource in Academia: A Decade of Research / Bridging Industry and Academia in InnerSource / The Academic Evolution of InnerSource Studies
• Clare - Building the InnerSource Community: 10 Years of Growth / Community as Infrastructure: The InnerSource Commons Story / From Zero to Global: Growing the InnerSource Movement
• Russ - InnerSource in Industry: The Corporate Evolution / Balancing Community and Corporate: 10 Years of Lessons / How Companies Embraced InnerSource: A Decade in Review
• Jeff - Nike's InnerSource Journey: A 10-Year Retrospective / From Skepticism to Strategy: InnerSource at Nike / Scaling InnerSource in a Global Corporation: The Nike Story
• Georg - Bosch and InnerSource: How It All Began / Manufacturing Meets Open Source: The Bosch InnerSource Story / Traditional Industries Transformed: A Decade of InnerSource at Bosch
• Daniel - Measuring InnerSource Growth: A Decade of Metrics / Quantifying Value: The Evolution of InnerSource Metrics / From Instinct to Evidence: How We Learned to Measure InnerSource
• Zack - GitHub and InnerSource: Partners in Collaboration / How GitHub Enabled the InnerSource Movement / Tools for Transformation: GitHub's Role in InnerSource Growth
• Yuki Hattori - InnerSource Across Cultures: Global Perspectives / Different Countries, Same Principles: InnerSource Around the World / Building Local InnerSource Communities: The Global Experience

Note: I just brainstormed on AI Generated, so some of the context may seem a little odd 🙏 Also, the names are just a random list of people I've come up with who I've been involved with lately, so I don't mean anything else by that either!

[yuhattor]

It's related to https://github.com/InnerSourceCommons/innersourcecommons.org/issues/78

[NiallJoeMaher]

Do we have a format for creating blog pages from markdown already? Or is this a completely new feature that we need to start adding content?

Or did you want a blogging editor/tool to make it easier for folks?

[rrrutledge]

Would need to set this up, @NiallJoeMaher. On the innersourcecommons.org site somewhere? Or do we use some other blogging platform?

[rrrutledge]

The content pipeline and schedule should be managed together with the community calls.

[NiallJoeMaher]

I've a bespoke solution for Codú with lots of options so worth a chat: https://www.codu.co/articles

[yuhattor]

Thank you!!

Basically now we are thinking of consolidating everything on InnerSourceCommons.org. We have so many sub-domain sites which is not SEO friendly. This would need to be centralized on the site, especially since some of the stuff is pretty official. These are called blogs, but they are a place to document our history. So intuitively, we are referring to something like “Archives”, ‘Chronicle’ or “Timeline.”

Basically, it is the kind of thing that can be technically implemented in 20m, since it is just a little tweak of Hugo's template to implement.

But we can also do things like manage the pipeline out of the box. Personally, I don't want to force all members to write articles in markdown on GitHub... The easiest way to start would be to manage it in Google Docs / Google Spreadsheet. I think it would be good for Andrea and others to publish their articles as a blog.

It would be great if these could be automated in some way, and it would be nice to have something more lightweight for pipeline management, etc

[yuhattor]

I actually had already implemented the Blog, but it was out of date, so PR itself is closed for now. But the content shows how easy it is to implement! 😄 https://github.com/InnerSourceCommons/innersourcecommons.org/pull/775

These activities are also measures to improve the authority of our InnerSourceCommons.org. So basically we want to include them on the site, not in separate places.

That said, (and this is something we haven't even started discussing yet), the following sites should also be integrated into the InnerSourceCommons.org subdirectory This is a frequent comment from our members.

• patterns.innersourcecommons.org
• https://innersourcecommons.gitbook.io/managing-innersource-projects
• gatherings.innersourcecommons.org

That said, from an SEO perspective, cross-posting might still make sense, since our site doesn’t yet have strong search authority. I’d like to follow the Marketing WG’s guidance on this. Also, this isn’t intended to be a “tried-this-out” engineer’s blog or a trend-chasing tech blog, so platforms filled with lightweight content like dev.to aren’t suitable. Medium would be a better fit imo, and using LinkedIn’s blog feature could also work (This way is more diffuse and existing mechanisms can be used)

We might consider using the InnerSource Commons LinkedIn blog as our primary platform and linking to it from innersourcecommons.org—in other words, treating LinkedIn as the authoritative source. That approach could be more convenient for our staff as well.

What do you think...? 👀

[rrrutledge]

I like going the other way - blogging on innersourcecommons.org and linking there from LinkedIn to drive more traffic and authority to our website.

[rrrutledge]

But the biggest thing now is to have someone "own" and drive the content pipeline and process.

[dellagustin-sap]

Hi @yuhattor , thank you for driving this!

I think we should consider experimenting with Unproven practices ("this is what happened when we implemented it") and InnerSource hypotheses or speculative content, as long as it is clear on the text that it is what it is. My argument for that is that we don't have yet a channel for publishing such content, and blogs seems to be a good format for that. It could spark discussions and experiments in the community that could evolve into proven practices (e.g. Patterns or Book chapters/references).

[jeffabailey]

Personally, I don't want to force all members to write articles in markdown on GitHub... The easiest way to start would be to manage it in Google Docs / Google Spreadsheet.

Could they use something like pages-cms?

https://pagescms.org/docs/

[yuhattor]

@dellagustin-sap agree! I think it would be a good idea to do a maximum of 5 selected blogs (including interviews with Danese and other founding members) for the 25th anniversary of InnerSource and the 10th anniversary of ISC at first. We should experiment there and see how it goes before deciding whether to make this an ongoing project

[yuhattor]

@jeffabailey interesting! I've never used that, but it looks good. Could you try it with forked innersourcecommons.org site (or replicated environment under innersourcecommons org)?? 👀

If we still use Hugo, I believe there's not many options... PagesCSM sounds reasonable option

[NiallJoeMaher]

@yuhattor - Perfect, happy to look into it and own it if nobody else has their hand up. If you already have the blog setup why not reopen it? We can always migrate the blog to a different tool/whatever later. Just getting some blog posts up for feedback would be a big win since this SEO stuff takes time. 🕐

I think we can create a sub issue for an SEO audit, given the goals. I can help with that 🦾

[jeffabailey]

Could you try it with forked innersourcecommons.org site (or replicated environment under innersourcecommons org)?? 👀

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/3de73f04-65d3-42d5-aa7e-25b6a3429138

[jeffabailey]

Is there a backlog for future blog posts yet?

[rrrutledge]

Haven't heard of anything. I think the big thing here is to understand if we want this to keep going on a long(er) term basis? If so, then I want to reference back to a few of my previous comments:

The biggest thing now is to have someone "own" and drive the content pipeline and process. The content pipeline and schedule should be managed together with the community calls.

[yuhattor]

If we start discussing whether or not we can continue, there's a risk that we might end up not being able to do anything at all. So, fundamentally, it would be better to first set a deadline, list the articles we want to create, assign people to each task, and proceed in a project-based manner.

This initiative, in particular, relates to milestones like the ISC 10th and InnerSource 25th anniversaries, so I believe there's real significance in treating it as a project.

So, at the very least, how about starting by creating a backlog?

[yuhattor]

I'll take this on as my task for now. I'll make either an Announcement or Story the target location for the release.

• InnerSource 25th anniversary article
• InnerSource Commons 10th anniversary article

For now, I'll work on writing the above

[rrrutledge]

Looking forward to it