[vox] yet another os?

[Doug Huckaba <mrdougMAPS@attbi.com>]

A friend of mine passed this to me. Perhaps you've seen it, perhaps not.. 
It does raise my curiosity tho...

-- 

article from The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26278.html

China to build own version of Windows 98
By John Lettice
Posted: 19/07/2002 at 07:48 GMT

China has kicked off a development programme intended to produce a
home-grown operating system with equivalent functionality to Windows 98,
and with compatibility with Office 2000 and Word, reports The People's
Daily this morning.

The plan is to break the "monopoly of foreign office software," which we
believe may be code for 'Microsoft,' and to this end the Beijing IT
Industry Promotion Center announced two initiatives, "Yangfan" and
"Qihang," intended to produce a Win98 level OS within a year. 18 companies
and universities are worknig on them, and Yangfan 1.0 is already being
deployed in government departments.

Win98 may seem like old news, but it's still useful for older, lower spec
and cheaper machines. And if China did happen to produce an equivalent
that had somewhat less bolloxed memory management, The Reg might even be
up for a couple of licences.

The exact (or indeed even the approximate) nature of the software is
however unclear. If the software is intended to be simply compatible with
Word and Office 2000 file formats then the task isn't huge, but the
development of an OS that would run these is a different can of worms
altogether. And is it Linux-based, given that China's been quite keen on
Linux in between taking money from Steve Ballmer? Or is it a Dos clone, or
something else? We are intrigued, and would dearly love to hear from
someone in the know. ®




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