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.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.“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.”
