Korean OSS Contest Opens Doors to Worldwide Developers

Until August 30, students and any other developer who wants to participate, can register for the Challenge, which is aimed at giving international competitors a chance to contribute to projects from around the world, fostering information exchange and the growth of a network of worldwide open source developers.

The theme of the contest is freestyle software development, so a wide variety of international developers can participate. Completed projects should be based on open source platforms, and be licensed with an open source license. After the Aug. 30 deadline, developers will have until October 23, 2009 to submit their work.

While the contest is hosted by the MKE, it is organized by the Korea Software Industry Promotion Agency (KIPA, a Linux Foundation member), the Korea Open Source Software Association (KOSSA), and the Korea OSS Promotion Forum (KOPF). The event is sponsored by several other organizations, including Samsung, Black Duck, and the Linux Foundation.

International participants can enter any sort of open source projects, as can Korean domestic developers. However, the Challenge has assigned categories for domestic developers as well. The additional of the “freestyle” category for domestic and international developers is new to the Challenge this year.

The contest is not without prizes. The Grand Prize for free and assigned categories in the Domestic Division is 5 million KRW, approximately US$3800. The same cash award will be available to the winner of the International Division of the contest as well. All International Division prize winners will receive flight and hotel accomodations for one person from each prize-winning team to attend the awards ceremony on November 5, 2009, at a to-be-announced venue.

Grand prize winners will be eligible to attend the Northeast Asia OSS Promotion Forum in 2010.

For more information, or to register for the contest, visit the Challenge web site.