Tech war: China doubles down on domestic operating systems to cut reliance on Windows, MacOS from the US
- Kylinsoft joined forces with more than 10 Chinese entities to create an open-source code community named openKylin
- China’s quest for a domestic operating system has been going on for decades, but Microsoft Windows remains dominant
China has created an open platform to accelerate the development of a home-grown desktop operating system, in its latest effort to shake off the country’s reliance on foreign systems such as Microsoft Windows and Apple’s MacOS.
Kylinsoft, a subsidiary of state-owned China Electronics Corp, last week joined forces with more than 10 Chinese entities, including the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Centre, to set up an open-source code community.
Named “openKylin”, it allows programmers to publish and share computer codes related to the Kylin operating system.
The effort comes amid rising tensions between the United States and China. The latter has been trying to boost local production of key technologies ranging from semiconductors to software.
China’s quest for a competitive domestic operating system has been going on for decades, with some candidates already available in the market. Kylin was originally developed by the National University of Defence Technology of the People’s Liberation Army, which has been licensing Kylinsoft for commercial applications since 2014.