• donating the domain "openid.co.kr" to the public, which is the Korean-translated proxy of openid.net
• started the OpenID community in Korea through openid.or.kr
• lauching of myID.net, currently the largest OpenID provider (IDP) in Korea
• completed the translation of OpenID 1.1 specs into Korean with the OpenID community
• offering of the jointsignup service, designed to foster OpenID consumer activities
• various evangelizing and education activities to major portals like Daum, leading them to join the OpenID initiative
• offering of Veresion 2 with additional services on myID.net, such as contact list and group membership, in order to popularize OpenID services in general
  

Be a heaven for those who work here.

That's one of our main goals at openmaru. We've seen time after time that creating a work environment where developers can come in and try out different things with passion and creatvity can only benefit the company, at least in the long term.

So from the beginning, we put a lot of focus on finding the right developers that can come to work with us with an attitude like "I'm going to change the world" or "I'll do my best to bring most creativity out of myself". During the recruiting processes, we looked more at what kind spirit and passion they had than knowledge about certain technology. Ruby, PHP, Python? All good. CSS, DOM, or Javascript? All good. In fact, we have some of the top developers and tech gurus in each of those fields. But without noticing passion, we wouldn't have decided to have them work with us.

In order for us to achieve that, we performed on-the-spot "show me your money" tests. We gave out little projects which they had to complete right before the interviews. Developers had to code while designers and services planners had to come up with a blueprint dealing with how to solve certain issues or to create new services.

More than anything, we wanted to work with those who believe in the value of "open". Because if openmaru is all about open platforms, developers always need to understand the needs for open technologies and protocols.

Throughout our rigorous talent search process, we were able to meet some really brilliant and passionate developers from all over Korea, or even from overseas. Because of our persistent efforts to find developers who are still dreaming and willing to work in order to achieve the dreams, we were often called by many as the "developers' heaven."

Now, "they" in this article are all "we" now. We're all working towards the same goal and same direction. Maximize your talent, passion, and goals. That's what we exactly want for each one of us.

Maybe not so much "heaven". Yet, at least we know for sure an environment like this is a very good first step.

In the last post, we explained the concentrated and somewhat not-as-open nature of the Korean Web. However, from the beginning, we've been saying the main strategy and goal of openmaru is to create an open platform. If you think about it, it's rather quite a bizarre direction to pursue for a company located in Korea. Again, in the Koean Web market, a scale-and-scope approach with high level concentration and portalization is often considered the best strategy for success.

We've been observing the Web for a long time. We've seen the soaring Firefox, an open source browser. We've seen the rise of amateur publishers, i.e. bloggers, often way over traditional media guys. We've witnessed the successes of Google, Amazon, and Ebay, and how their open strategy helped them a great deal. As a game company ourselves, Second Life's open source initiative left us with many great lessons. Our developers just purely Eclipse, an open source development platform for Java. Lately, we've been paying attention to the Facebook platform taking off big time. There most definitely must be something about being open, even from a business point of view. But again, this is all U.S., right?

And, thanks to the popularity of the term "Web 2.0", we started seeing the value of open in some of the Web services, even in Korea. Tattertools is the foremost example. It's the most famous blogging tool in Korea, like Wordpress. (In fact, this openmaru blog itself runs on Tattertools). Since Tatterools went open source last year, they've been reaping great fruits. Obviously, almost 100% of the contributors to Tattertools are Korean. When given really good things with a passionate community behind, it works in Korea, too.

We've implemented a similar open strategy with the way we've running our services at openmaru as well. Guess what. What we've been getting out of our openness is so tremendous that even some people in Korea won't believe openness works to that degree. For example, Springnote, the Webnotes/wiki service we briefly introduced here, recorded over 2,200 comments, 766 idea suggestions, 56 user generated tips, and 28 mashups on ifs forum, only after 50 days of launching. You know, that's something. myID.net service, our OpenID provision service, is taking off big time, again proving openness can work in Korean as well. Being ready to have conversations always matters!

But in the long term, not only for our business purposes, but also for the entire Web, we believe openness brings great values to everyone involved. Again, the Web was meant and born to be open. Why not follow the basic DNA of the Web?

We're openmaru and we're here to bring you the open platform. We're ready to show you that openness works everywhere as long as we're all connected. So please don't' hesitate to watch us. We got some special things in our pocket.