I just had the pleasure of speaking at the first annual FOSS Con, Korea. The Korean software industry, self-admittedly, may be slightly behind the west in open source governance, but there is admirable momentum and a clear desire to be world-class in this respect.
The event was organized by Charley Tschoy and J.B. Park, attorneys with the newly formed KOSS Law Center. Very importantly, they did so with the backing of NIPA (National IT Promotion Association), part of the Ministry of Knowledge Economy. The agency has made this a top priority and is investing heavily to promote the use of open source and its proper governance. In addition to conferences, they provide substantial R&D resources (to analyze the quality of various open source projects, for example) and extensive web resources for companies and developers.
Mr. Chung, the president of NIPA, kicked-off the event, and it was a clearly a big deal. (He would be the equivalent of an assistant director of a US federal agency). He and his lieutenant, Mr. Yang, painted a picture of vibrant growth in the use of open source in Korea, but with the concern that it is outpacing the implementation of appropriate governance. He cautioned that closing that gap is a “must” if Korea is to be competitive in global markets.
Interestingly, the event, as well as the overall effort around governance, has been heavily supported by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). About a half dozen of the speakers were FSFE-connected, including Karsten Gerloff, the president. Also contributing were Harold Welte and Armijn Hemel (in his signature Red Sox hat) of gpl-violations.org. Part of the Euro-connection is that, evidently, Korean law is much like German law—many Korean lawyers study in Germany—however, my sense is that these do-gooders have simply become caught-up in the enthusiasm of the Koreans who reached out to them for help.
The American contingent comprised me, McCoy Smith, an attorney from Intel, and Keith Bergelt, CEO of the Open Invention Network. I spoke about best practices in open source governance and was followed by Suhyun Kim from Samsung who proceeded to check off many of the practices I prescribed as he described the processes in place in his company. This is the first time Samsung has spoken publically about its processes. Amusingly, to illustrate how close-to-the-vest his company is, Mr. Kim reported that they had 187,000 employees and that the only way he knows that is from Wikipedia.
The conference drew about 200 attendees representing all of the major systems and software companies, and some smaller ones as well. From those I spoke with, the feedback was consistently positive, and they, too, sensed the momentum around using open source with proper governance. Full steam ahead!
