I have successfully done this in a couple of jobs. The key takeaways:
1. Help the managers realize that you're probably saving 1000s of hours monthly by using existing open source software. The least you can do (as a company) is to give few hours back to the community.
2. Sometimes it's about "can we open-source this tool/work/whatever?" or "does this give our competitors advantage?". Make sure you think this through before talking to the manager; I got a couple of internal tools open-sourced when I argued that even though it does advance our competitors if we'd publish a great tool, it also positions us as a company as the leaders of the genre (helping in recruitment, sales, etc).
3. "Does it benefit the company?" - Managers love to see the company logo in the project. So ask yourself if you're willing to trade some publicity of the company (e.g. "powered by YourCompany" badge, "supported by YourCompany" in the README.md, or moving the Github project under your company's account) for some hours that would be allocated for you to work on the project.
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I have successfully done this in a couple of jobs. The key takeaways:
1. Help the managers realize that you're probably saving 1000s of hours monthly by using existing open source software. The least you can do (as a company) is to give few hours back to the community.
2. Sometimes it's about "can we open-source this tool/work/whatever?" or "does this give our competitors advantage?". Make sure you think this through before talking to the manager; I got a couple of internal tools open-sourced when I argued that even though it does advance our competitors if we'd publish a great tool, it also positions us as a company as the leaders of the genre (helping in recruitment, sales, etc).
3. "Does it benefit the company?" - Managers love to see the company logo in the project. So ask yourself if you're willing to trade some publicity of the company (e.g. "powered by YourCompany" badge, "supported by YourCompany" in the README.md, or moving the Github project under your company's account) for some hours that would be allocated for you to work on the project.