All joint effort open source project, Winter of Code (WoC) was launched by ncsoft , Korean IT firms and KIPA (Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency), along with community of software developers from December 4. The project is specifically targeted to bring up new developers and to further promote active open source development in the industry.

The WoC event gives students to participate in open source development and improve on individual skills during their winter recess. Each event project is run by one student and his mentor who must be a professional in related field of the project. Upon successful completion of the project, the participant(s) is awarded about 1,000,000 won (USD $1000). Each project will be judged by student's project mentor initially, then on to second round of judging by its project sponsor representative. As a bonus additional prize money will be given to top project.

Unlike Google's own SoC (Summer of Code) event, The WoC event is first ever open source project that involves companies and major communities that actually run business and offer services and in Korea. This event is quite different because the projects entered can get a chance to be actually commercialized in service industry. Beside the ncsoft, firms that are participating in the event include Tatter & Co. and The Wizard Works, From Java developer community, JCO(Java Community Organization), from Mac OS X developer community, osxdev.org, KLDP(Korean Linux Documentation Project), and from web base RSS reader community, Han RSS.

"Through this event I hope to see arising of more comfortable open source environment, cooperation and relation between the Korean internet firms. Especially it's more meaningful to see opportunity such as this that will attract more interest to the industry." Remarks made by Bumjun Kim of openmaru studio a web service branch of ncsoft, who is a cosponsor to this event.

Most events and promotions usually have one time effect and do not have longevity. Therefore the latest open source event will be focusing on creating lasting channel of information that can be shared throughout. On that note, many related domestic firm and developers and communities alike are showing avid interest in the first ever Korean open source development project, WoC.

Soonseon Kwon, who runs KLDP (Korean Linux Documentation Project) said, "This is the first ever open source event in Korea and I hope it will serve as a good opportunity to promote the open source to Korean students. I also hope that both the students and resulting projects can put a positive effect on the open source community."

"This event will give fresh challenges to those who hold future of Korean IT industry and same time lay new foundation to open source development and bring vitality to domestic open source market." pointed out by Youngmin Yu, KIPA director

The project participants must speak fluent Korean to communicate with the event sponsors and it's open to any students from middle to high school, colleges, trade and grad schools. The event application can be submitted from WoC 2006 website from December 4 thru 20. The final roster of event participants will be announced on December 22 and the project is to be run from January to February. The final result of the project will be shared on March. All the projects in the event will be made available in open source.