China Unveils New Native Operating System

http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/china-unveils-new-native-operating-system/?_php=true&_type=blogs&ref=world&_r=0

by davidsmith8900 • 13 years ago

57 69 13 years ago

sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com

joshuapants• 13 years ago

Can anyone summarize this? Got hit by the paywall

w1ntermute2• 13 years ago

Some Chinese "researchers" reskinned Android, then released it without the source and claimed that it's a new OS they developed from the ground up. Nothing interesting.

fharper1961• 13 years ago

I think what's interesting, is if the Chinese consumers will buy it in large numbers, or not. The future of Android will be very different depending on what happens in China.

shubb• 13 years ago

Why are people incredulous that China could produce an operating system? They have the skilled labor to do it.

I can get incredulity that they would want to - a chinese certified security inspected android/linux would do what is needed for less money. The US have security checked versions of opensource projects, and it would seem the best way to go. But government mandated projects produce not invented here solutions from time to time.

I write the above, but I think this isn't an argument about whether China could code an OS, or whether they would code it from scratch rather than basing it on opensource components.

I think a lot of Americans are uncomfortable with the idea of China designing what it manufactures, because 'what would we do'. Inevitably, as number of scientists and engineers in China, India, etc increases, more of this kind of work will be done elsewhere, but that doesn't mean the amount done in America has to decrease. The world can just do twice as much inventing, and the speed of progress can double. Or, y'know, you guys could pivot to Asia, and we can have a 3rd world war. I've seen fox news a couple times, so I'll be in my basement checking my water reserves.

3pt14159• 13 years ago

Chinese researchers have developed a new mobile operating system intended to break the dominance in China of systems produced by Google, Apple and Microsoft.

At a ceremony in Beijing on Wednesday, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Shanghai-based Liantong Network Communications Technology unveiled the domestically produced China Operating System, or COS, designed for use on many devices including smartphones and personal computers.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences called COS a strategic product for national security, urgently needed following revelations regarding United States surveillance and Microsoft Windows ending further support of its XP system, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported.

The COS is “completely” independently developed, from the basic coding to the user interface, said an article posted on the Chinese Academy of Sciences website.

It said existing open-source operating systems pose security risks, and foreign-made systems have “acclimatization” difficulties in China, problems that COS addresses.

Li Mingshu, director of the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said Wednesday that the researchers intend to continue making improvements to COS and match or even overtake other systems that dominate the Chinese market today.

Chen Feili, the deputy general manager of Liantong Network Communications Technology, told C114, a Chinese communications news website, that the Chinese telecom giants China Mobile and China Telecom have been testing phones based on COS over the past three months.

There’s already “a certain consensus” about bringing a commercial version of COS to market, Mr. Chen said. He said that discussions about business models and compatibility issues were already underway.

Though he declined to mention the names of the manufacturers, Mr. Chen said that there are already four smartphone models that use COS.

COS can run Java applications, and supports HTML 5 web applications and games, the C114 article said. It is currently compatible with over 100,000 applications, it said.

The state broadcaster CCTV showed COS in action on Thursday, in a news segment in which a reporter demonstrated that people could play popular games, including “Cut the Rope” and “Angry Birds” on an unbranded black mobile phone.

Mr. Chen said he has high ambitions for COS, saying the “ultimate goal” is to make it the main operating system in China. This is a lofty goal. According to the American market researcher International Data Corporation, China’s smartphone market is dominated by Android with nearly 90 percent of phones in 2013 running on the Google system.

COS is not the only domestically produced operating system to make headlines recently. On Jan. 9, the Chinese technology company Coship Electronics announced that it had produced the country’s first smartphone operating system with independent intellectual property rights. The company’s chairman, Yuan Ming, said that the system, called 960 OS, took 15 years to develop.

How long COS was under development and the costs of research and development were not disclosed.

Although the state-run People’s Daily praised COS on Thursday as the “realization of the Chinese Dream in the field of operating systems,” the online reaction from Chinese consumers was more scathing.

“Its full name should be Copy Other System,” said one user with the handle “byxu,” in one of the most upvoted comments on Sina weibo. “It’s not open source because they’re terrified that others will see that the source code is the same as Android, and accuse them of cheating the government out of money.”

fredgrott• 13 years ago

HTC is already distancing itself..look for the same result as before Google finds out and than puts pressure on HTC to drop it like its hot and stolen

fiatmoney• 13 years ago

For future reference, you can just open it in a private browsing window.

slurry• 13 years ago

No commercial release yet, no source release ever.

Bureaucrats quoted as praising it seem to be mid-level at best.

Either vaporware, or reskinned Linux/Android, or most likely both.

tarblog2• 13 years ago

You can circumvent the paywall by googling the name of the article and clicking the NYT article that comes up. If that doesn't work, try again in an incognito window.

kbenson• 13 years ago

It said existing open-source operating systems pose security risks

I'm wondering how to interpret that. Is it supposed to mean that they aren't happy with the coding practices in Android, that they think there are backdoors, or is it really just propaganda?

rtpg• 13 years ago

It seems to be the classic "security through obscurity" instance.

coldtea• 13 years ago

Not at all. They didn't say closed source OSs were more secure -- they said that EVEN OSS OSs were not secure enough for their needs.

For an example of what that could mean, check the sibling comment.

derefr• 13 years ago

Possibly just that they have update mechanisms supported through US corporate channels, by which the NSA could push some individual Chinese-government official a one-time backdoor with no one being the wiser. (Which, you know, has happened.)

That's more just a reason to create your own Linux distro, though.

eliteraspberrie• 13 years ago

I think they mean security as in national security, not software security. The CCP believes it is in a "culture war" with the West and the Internet is a big part of it. Free software gives users too much freedom and they would prefer to have as much control as possible.

niels_olson• 13 years ago

open-source [whatever] poses security risks

That's exactly what I here from military IT management all the time. And I used to here from the rare Microsoft booster I came across in my university's IT-land. Makes you wonder if they ever took a math class, let alone wrote a line of code. I'm pretty sure it's a Microsoft sales talking point.

lukasm• 13 years ago

If you can't see the article just go to porn mode. Chrome OS X is shift+cmd+N

angersock• 13 years ago

Haven't heard "Private Browsing" called that before, but well, the glove fits.

interstitial• 13 years ago

I remember this from the 2000's Linux bubble: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux

barbs• 13 years ago

Also reminds me of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS

petermcd2• 13 years ago

I met a local Chinese guy in Beijing several years ago who knew the Red Flag people. Based on what he told me, it sounded like Red Flag positioned themselves as the official Linux of China, which meant they would be specified and required by Chinese government agencies and state-owned enterprises. Red Flag then told the Chinese government that to make Red Flag Linux successful, they would need government funding. With a nascent team, simple product, and this funding in hand, they they went to the big players in the PC and server ecosystems (Intel, etc.) and said that if those companies wanted their hardware sold in China, it would need Red Flag Linux, and Red Flag could provide consulting services to make sure Red Flag Linux ran well on their hardware.

According to the guy I talked to, the Red Flag management team then embezzled most all of the money from the government and US, Japanese, and European companies and left an understaffed team of developers to deliver on the contracts with the foreign companies.

Another Chinese friend said years ago that many Chinese tech entrepreneurs were "just making money off the investors." It didn't make sense to me until I heard the Red Flag story.

gaius• 13 years ago

Embezzling from the Party would seem to be a career-limiting move, no? There must be more to it. As in, the Party or power members thereof must have been in on it.

higherpurpose• 13 years ago

Can we get some sources that aren't from NYT on HN? I know I can search for the link on Google, but I've gotten tired of doing that. I'd rather see a "blogspam" source than keep doing that.

I don't even think NYT was the original source on this. I remember reading about it a couple of days ago.

cdcarter• 13 years ago

Why would you rather see blogspam than reporting from a generally reputable paper? Perhaps if you give us a reason for why you seem to detest the grey lady, you'll have a better chance of convincing others.

tarblog2• 13 years ago

The reason is because of the NYT paywall, which can be circumvented easily by googling the article and going to the NYT site, but that basically means that the link is broken for all people who read NYT regularly.

pygy_• 13 years ago

The paywall is based on cookies.

Open the link in a private window to circumvent it.

scholia• 13 years ago

The NYT article was published a couple of days ago: January 17, 2014, 4:46 am

eob3• 13 years ago

Your comment was posted 5 hours ago: January 19, 5:00 PM EST.

callesgg• 13 years ago

I find i very hard to believe that someone (even a extremely large group) would be able to build an operating system from the ground up that runs java applications and renders HTML5. In less than something like 10 years.

Using that as i ground i would put a large bet on that it is not at built from the ground up at all. Probably just a really bad linux distro.

ahomescu17• 13 years ago

This looks like a massive project that you can just throw people at. Putting 1000 people on this would get you a 1000x speedup over making it a one-man project. OTOH, you'd need a very good design from experienced people (OS experts, web browser experts, Java/JavaScript compiler people, etc).

calineczka• 13 years ago

Putting 1000 people on this would get you a 1000x speedup over making it a one-man project

What? Do you seriously believe in that?

digitalzombie• 13 years ago

you should read mythical man month...

weland3• 13 years ago

I really hope I never work with you.

kodablah• 13 years ago

True. A JVM and a standards compliant browser from scratch are significant achievements and I am very skeptical. The last quote mentions that they won't open source it because it copies those things (which is not bad, but a far cry from "completely independently developed"). I think they won't open source it because non-corporate adoption is less important than the state-secret mentality.

But it shouldn't matter, once released surely engineers can disassemble the binaries or check implementation quirks of Oracle/Google tech implementations to know whether they are fresh implementations.

Edit: Ok, a JVM alone is not that significant, but re-building the Java standard libs (harmony-style) and making the JVM high performing (dalvik-style) is.

petermcd2• 13 years ago

You could do this quickly if you just ran Android with a desktop skin.

austinz• 13 years ago

I expect this to go the same way as the Green Dam web filtering software that was introduced/'mandated' a few years back: people make a fuss about it for a short while and then promptly forget about it; it's never mentioned again.

jccalhoun• 13 years ago

This seems to be the latest in a long line of Chinese versions of tech: Red Flag Linux, CBHD, CVD. Anyone know if these are actually used or if the Chinese government just announces them and then fade away?

vorg• 13 years ago

A year ago they announced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Kylin which was released in April but I've yet to see it installed on any demo computer in the large IT sales halls around China. They all have Windows 8 pre-installed.

esbranson• 13 years ago

domestically produced China Operating System
"completely" independently developed, from the basic coding to the user interface
existing open-source operating systems pose security risks

No one trolls like the New York Times and China.

vzhang• 13 years ago

In light of how much we know about NSA, if I were a leader of a nation of the size of China, I would want my own OS.

protomyth• 13 years ago

I would probably be more concerned with what's running my routers first.

yeukhon2• 13 years ago

At first I was surprised because last year China and Canonical started to make China's own Ubuntu. http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/ubuntukylin My guess is, after reading some Chinese articles, the Chinese government wants this to be the standard OS in China. They want this to be the national's mobile OS and future PC OS.

Anyhow, this new OS called COS is developed based on Linux, but is closed source.Here is a screenshot of the prototype: http://images2.china.com/tech/zh_cn/news/company/892/2014012...

turingbook2• 13 years ago

the Chinese government wants this to be the standard OS in China.

That is misleading. The IT market in China is more demand-driven. Impact from the government is limited in government sectors.

yeukhon2• 13 years ago

I argue that that's not misleading.

Say your office gets computer from Dell and most of the desktops seem stable 98% of the time. Next time when you want a new computer, if you are not a computer geek already, you probably will trust Dell over HP because you have experience with Dell and from experience you know Dell works for you. So in the nutshell, the Chinese government can make this standard OS right now if they want to. In reality, if they really want to pursue this, they will need many years to make this well-known.

Chinese's market is not very different from the Western market. As soon as multiple people recommend X as a choice, X becomes a choice in your shopping list automatically. Remember they want to design the COS to fit the Chinese's usage. This means they want to add their own input natively, their own speech recognition software, they own applications. Things that matter or relevant to the Chinese citizen. Instead of Google Hangout they can add Tencent's QQ/Weixin/Wechat app. Instead of twitter they add Weibo. And of course, they can load whatever they want in this OS that will work for their regulations and laws.

What isn't clear to us is how much is completely rewritten/written by the Chinese engineers since this is based on Linux. Some suspect this is just "Copy Other System" (a joke for COS acronym), which could be another research grant scam.

turingbook2• 13 years ago

It is still based on Linux kernel: http://translate.google.com.hk/translate?act=url&hl=en&ie=UT...

“Wu Yanjun said, COS system is more concerned about the nature of the underlying technology and security, on top of the Linux kernel, our researchers were developing for nearly ten million lines of code, can now maintain, create, publish our own version independently.”

Actually, China companies and academic institutions are developing several Linux kernel based OSes these years: OPhone from China Mobile, UPhone from China Unicom (now called Tongzhou/Coship 960), YunOS from Alibaba(famous for clashing with Google), Tianci OS from SkyWorth for TVs (there are other OSes for TVs including NGB AOS, STVOS, etc.), to name a few.

They are all struggling in making phone vendors and end users' adoption. But it is a highly risky game with high return. China is a big market. Even you juse got 1% market share, you will have tens of millions of users.

octref• 13 years ago

It is rumored the app store would be named Cosplay.

allochthon• 13 years ago

I am ambivalent about this news item on many levels.

- It sounds like a nation-building project. Those are so 1950.

- It sounds like an Orwellian way to get a backdoor into peoples' mobile devices and, among other things, know where they are at any given moment.

- It sounds like a reasonable protection against the mad geniuses at the NSA, especially for devices managed by the Chinese government.

Are all mobile devices sold within China to use this OS? Without being self-righteous, because I am aware of many problems in my own country, I feel bad for people there.

eplanit• 13 years ago

TL;DR Read w1ntermute's summary below -- nailed it.

China Unveils New Native Operating System

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