Whenever changes to the InnerSource Patterns GitHub repository are made, a new version of our InnerSource Patterns book is published at gitbook.com.

The files in the ./book folder contain generator scripts and some extra content required to create our gitbook.

The most up-to-date version of the book is available for readers/consumers at innersourcecommons.gitbook.io/innersource-patterns/.

NOTE: The final URL of the book has not been determined yet.

We also have a Staging version, used by the editors/producers of the book for testing purposes.

In the book we publish the patterns of maturity Structured (Level 2) or Validated (Level 3). For more on these maturity levels see the Contributor Handbook.

• /.gitbook.yaml - Holds basic configuration for the gitbook service. This never needs to be changed.
• /book/toc.md - An auto-generated table of contents (ToC) for the book i.e. a list of all pages and patterns that are part of the book. The ToC is what you see on the left-hand-side menu in gitbooks.
• /book/generate_toc.rb - Takes patterns of maturity Structured and Validated, extracts title and patlet, and injects this info into /book/toc_template.md. The output is written to /book/toc.md.
• .github/workflows/book.yml - A GitHub Action that triggers the execution of /book/generate_toc.rb.
• /book/introduction.md - The introduction to our book. This content is what the reader sees first when they open the book. The current content is based on README.md. We may need to modify this content even further, to address the readers of the book more specifically, rather than the readers of our GitHub repository.
• /book/contribute-to-this-book.md - Information about how to contribute to this book.

These patterns are already publicly available in the InnerSource Patterns GitHub repo. So why publish such a book at all?

We think there are a couple of good reasons to publish the InnerSource patterns as a gitbook:

• (consumers) have something that is “nicer” to read than things on GitHub
• (consumers) have stable URLs for patterns i.e. even if the files move in the folder structure in the repo, the URL of the pattern stay the same
• (consumers) export book as PDF and read on other devices
• (producers) a motivation for pattern authors (and all contributors) to level up patterns from 1-initial, as only 2-structured and 3-validated are published in the book
• (producers) a motivation for us to introduce more specific quality guidelines for level 2+3, so that we can be even more proud of the content in the book :)
• (producers) learn which patterns are most interesting for readers (e.g. through Google Analytics)