
China Unveils New Native Operating System - davidsmith8900
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/china-unveils-new-native-operating-system/?_php=true&_type=blogs&ref=world&_r=0
======
turingbook
It is still based on Linux kernel:
[http://translate.google.com.hk/translate?act=url&hl=en&ie=UT...](http://translate.google.com.hk/translate?act=url&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&sl=zh-
CN&tl=en&u=http://ydhl.cena.com.cn/2014-01/18/content_210239.htm)

“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.

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callesgg
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.

~~~
ahomescu1
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
> 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?

~~~
ahomescu1
Yes, see the parallel comment. There are many independent pieces in an entire
OS: kernel, drivers, browser, all the applications, libraries etc. Most of
them are weakly connected (except maybe the platform libraries). Are you
saying someone couldn't develop a POSIX-compliant kernel and libc in parallel
with the apps that run on it?

~~~
eob
You might be interested in this book. It's required reading in many CS
curricula:

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Mythical-Man-Month-Engineering-
Ann...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Mythical-Man-Month-Engineering-
Anniversary/dp/0201835959)

~~~
ahomescu1
Someone already brought it up in a sibling comment.

------
interstitial
I remember this from the 2000's Linux bubble:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux)

~~~
petermcd
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
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.

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

~~~
coldtea
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.

------
austinz
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
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
A year ago they announced
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Kylin](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.

------
allochthon
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.

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

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

------
yeukhon
At first I was surprised because last year China and Canonical started to make
China's own Ubuntu.
[http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/ubuntukylin](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...](http://images2.china.com/tech/zh_cn/news/company/892/20140120/18299234_2014012008411851696900.jpg)

~~~
turingbook
>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.

~~~
yeukhon
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.

------
joshuapants
Can anyone summarize this? Got hit by the paywall

~~~
w1ntermute
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.

~~~
shubb
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.

~~~
weland
I'm rather incredulous that they built something which can run Java (they
either have a Linux compatibility layer for it, or they built a JVM from
scratch) and display HTML5. The skilled labour to do it they definitely have,
it's time that I doubt they have.

That being said, I've seen enough Chinese-made products to know that the Made
in China meme doesn't do all of them justice. Some of the things they build
are remarkable; they have very good people doing microelectronics, RF and
high-speed digital designs.

------
esbranson
> 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.

------
octref
It is rumored the app store would be named Cosplay.

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

------
higherpurpose
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
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.

~~~
tarblog
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.

~~~
Refefer
You could, you know, pay for a subscription. If you're bumping up on the limit
of free articles per month, you're clearly getting some value from the paper.
There are worse things than supporting good journalism!

~~~
zhemao
You could also take the cheapskate's way out and open the link in incognito
mode.

I don't know what the NYT was thinking when they developed such an easily
circumventable paywall.

~~~
eob
The NYT is executing a decade-long return to payment-based reporting. The
early parts include easy-to-circumvent paywalls so that they can have some
price discrimination [1] while also setting the social norms that payment is
expected for web content. The later stages will likely include more rigid
restrictions on content -- but that will only fly once "pay to read" is
something people expect from expert content on the web, rather than are
surprised by.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination)

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

