Open Source Software is software with source coding- open to the public which everyone can freely use, utilize, and distribute.
The vision of open software is in the unique properties of the software itself. Both quality and security are improved quickly as the source code is open, tested, and reviewed by a developer-user community. Therefore, the complexity of software is a suitable approach for the recent environment as a software development method.
Korea Open Source Software Association (Abbreviations: KOSSA, President Song Sang Hyo) was named to the Korea Lunux Council in 1999 and has promoted the importance and necessity of open software for the last 12 years. The organization has been actively involved with a number of activities contributing to open software industry development in Korea.
In 2006, the Korea Linux Council was changed to the Korea Open Source Software Association as it became a corporation. Currently, more than 200 companies and organizations have signed up as members and have been active as the only OSS Association in South Korea. Its vision is based on strengthening the industrial competitive edge in open SW related industries through businesses. These include open SW market activation strategies, the OLC (Open Source Software Learning Community Center) education business for developing open SW professionals, open SW developer competition, strengthening the network between the members, as well as support for open SW overseas countries.
The representative members vary from major domestic IT corporate such as LG Electronics, SK C&C to international solution corporations such as Red Hat, Black Duck Software and other companies such as Hancom, Enkisoft, Krosys, Cubrid, Uengine Solutions, and Super User Korea. Major businesses on the Korea Open Software Council can be classified as research based and suggestions for policy, development of manpower, and services for supporting the members are also conducted.
1) Businesses for survey and policies
The association does its best to make efforts in having the opinions of the industry reflected in government policy. In order to do this, various meetings and forums including operating the open SW business forum are conducted and, the feedback is gathered and presented to the government. Also, the association fosters the participation of the global community such as developing the Korean developers as global committers.
2) Professional Training Project
The open SW developer competition, the only public SW contest in the world, has been held since 2007 to train outstanding professionals in the relevant fields. For the sixth anniversary this year, 400 domestic teams in total including junior division (elementary and junior high school students) and general division (college students and ordinary people) and 83 international teams from 33 countries have participated in the competition which has subsequently established itself as the best SW Global competition.
Also, the only OLC education business (Open Source Software Learning Community Center) for training excellent open SW developers is proceeding in cooperation with the Ministry of Knowledge Economy and the National IT industry Promotion Agency. OLC is the education portal established to train the Open Software professionals and has Marketplace functionality which the users can upload not only the courses they take but also their own lectures. As of August 2008, the community has 15,000 members and more than 1,100 lectures are in operation.
3) Supporting member services
The Association offers a wide range of services to support the members.
First of all, in order to vitalize the open SW market, industrial, educational, and networking alliance has been formed and the education-related personnel and physical network structure constitution and infrastructure DB have been established. Also, the “Cloud open SW conference” is in operation to unify the cloud service and open SW. The conference carries forward services in cooperation with open SW based cloud service as a brand of “K Cloud.”.
The open SW business forum designed to support members to travel abroad and the open small-medium forum for vitalizing the domestic industry are in operation. These forums offer activities such as publishing a corporate directory, conducting surveys on open SW demand and actual conditions, and producing and manufacturing the trend report. Also, as part of the overseas open SW support business, it has been involved in open SW education support activities in Mongolia.
Having a brief look at the current open SW industry situation, there is increasing support for open software from the government to prevent monopoly and pursue fair competition, as well as promote mutual development through powerful open source software support policy.
Also, global vendors such as IBM, Oracle, Dell, and HP have raised substantial indirect sales in domestic markets by giving support for open source SW and through various activities. There is an increase in utilizing the open source in not only the embedded and mobile platform market but also in the cloud market.
However, despite these conditions and vision, the intellectual property issues of open software have emerged as a big issue. The Korean Association of open software has prepared to function as the main resources for corresponding licensing issues with all the people concerned.
The open software companies and a community of minorities may not only provide the solutions for various issues based on a variety of documents, experience, and human resources, but also do its best to promote the rights as well as give legal protection.
As Korea’s only OSS related association, you may contact us below if you have requests directed around global business with KOSSA which is the center for nations, industries, communities, and academies.
SHIM, HO SUNG / Secretary-General / neider@kossa.kr / 82-2-511-7917
Korea open Source Software Association
(121-795) 1605, Sangam-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul, Korea
