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.
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