Huawei Founder Urges Shift To Software To Counter US Sanctions

Founder of Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Ren Zhengfei has called on the company's staff to "dare to lead the world" in software as the company seeks growth beyond the hardware operations that U.S. sanctions have crippled. From a report: The internal memo seen by Reuters is the clearest evidence yet of the company's direction as it responds to the immense pressure sanctions have placed on the handset business that was at its core. Ren said in the memo the company was focusing on software because future development in the field is fundamentally "outside of U.S. control and we will have greater independence and autonomy." As it will be hard for Huawei to produce advanced hardware in the short term, it should focus on building software ecosystems, such as its HarmonyOS operating system, its cloud AI system Mindspore, and other IT products, the note said.

Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Software's not even a viable business anymore. Open source got there first.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and I'm certainly going to avoid any Chinese underhanded C code if I'm aware of it's origins!

Yes, it's Chinaphobia. ask the uighurs locked up in 're-education camps' for an opinion on that.

And Google said

[olsmeister]

"Hold my beer."

Have it Open Source to be compiled elsewhere.

[jellomizer]

Not necessarily under a GNU License (Would be nice, but that would be a different topic), but offered to us as source code, in which we can review, then compile in our respective countries before deploying to customers would be a good option.

The problem with Huawei is not their product or its quality, but trust that their product is doing what we have purchased, and not just a tool for the Chinese Government. Huawei could be very legit and just wants to compete with the Big Old Americans, which is fine, and the Chinese Government is not trying to risk a major economic boom for them, so they will keep their hands out. But the Communist Party is obsessed with keeping its power, and it has little in terms of checks and balances, that they may consider economic advantage to be secondary to keeping the party in power.

We cannot tell unless we have full transparency.

Re:Have it Open Source to be compiled elsewhere.

[theshowmecanuck]

I wouldn't trust that someone who isn't getting paid to do so, will go over the millions of lines of code that would likely be produced, in an sort of a diligent enough way to ensure there wasn't anything malicious in it. And even if paid, that they wouldn't go brain dead doing it after awhile and miss stuff. Especially when it doesn't have to be overtly malicious in form, but instead use built in coding flaws that look innocent that could be exploited easily, given the writers will know what could be exploited (having written the exploitable code). I'd rather just have stuff not coded in China by companies that will go out of business if people find too many security issues. When there are consequences to actions, people generally behave better.

Re:

[Malifescent]

I remember Huawei at one time offering to open-up its tech including source code, patents and even its hardware designs. It didn't get them anywhere, since no one would believe they'd actually do it, myself included.

I believed it to be a ploy to buy time whilst them throwing up a smoke screen. Most likely they would've only let selected government officials look at its tech under the condition they wouldn't expel them from their market. How could we know that the stuff they're showing us is actually what

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Huawei already has quite a lot of open source projects: https://github.com/Huawei [github.com]

They also share source code under NDA for big customers concerned about security and privacy.

Quite a few Chinese companies have embraced open source, e.g. Creality. They have found it helps with trust and with engagement with customers. I'm the case of Creality their 3D printers built up a decent community because of their openness, and some of the improvements people made got folded back into the products.

How is this going to let them win?

[larwe]

Besides the fact that, as others have pointed out, open source is likely to stay way on top of anything Huawei can achieve - how do they think this can insulate them from sanctions and activism? If the US can prevent Google from exporting Android code to Huawei, the US can sure prevent Huawei from exporting their software to the US, and it can exercise similar trade pressures to prevent their software from being adopted elsewhere as far as possible.

Zero trust

[DigitalCH]

As someone who had the IP from their startup stolen by Huawei, who used it to get access to things they shouldn't, I can say that company can NEVER be trusted. You should blacklist them at every point. If they make open source contributions you should delete them. If one of their employees shows up have security throw them face first into the concrete. They are an evil company, and there is no way you can ever disconnect them from their government. The world should ban together in saying we don't want open source contributions from some people, and they are the example.

Re: Zero trust

[aRTeeNLCH]

Got a link? Because all I have now is that some guy on a comment page insisted that we should stay away from Huawei. Makes my case a bit thin...

Software says no

[Malifescent]

I predicted Huawei would exit the hardware business (specifically the smartphone business) and this proves me right. There might be an attempt by Huawei to sell its network hardware business to some other Chinese company not under U.S. sanctions (same with the rest of the smartphone business) but I doubt there will be any takers. There's a good chance the new owner will also fall under the sanctions regime risking its existing business.

Best thing would be for the company to basically give up on the weste

Re:

[larwe]

This really seems like just one salvo in an inevitable cold war where there's COMECON hardware (mostly reverse-engineered Western equipment) and Western equipment, and an iron curtain through which neither type of equipment can travel.

Re: Software says no

[aRTeeNLCH]

I doubt they will exit the hardware business. HiSilicon is too big, and the CCP has too much riding on it.

Hahah

[backslashdot]

The US and Europe is way ahead in software. Is there any Chinese equivalent of chip design software (Cadence, Mentor Graphics), or CAD (AutoCAD, Pro Engineer, ANSYS), or graphics software (Adobe premier, Maya, etc.) No way for Chinese to catch up without investing billions over decades. I doubt they have the money.

Re:

[boudie2]

Less than 1% of China's population speak English. Somewhere in the range of 0-1% speak it well.

Re:

[Malifescent]

I thought their Lunar and Mars lander software worked pretty well. Better than their Indian and European counterparts.

Re:

[_merlin]

Cadence is from Singapore. Itâ(TM)s not from the US or Europe.

Re:

[backslashdot]

No. It is founded in, and headquartered in San Jose, California.
"Cadence Design Systems began as an electronic design automation (EDA) company, formed by the 1988 merger of Solomon Design Automation (SDA), co-founded in 1983 by Richard Newton, Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli and James Solomon, and ECAD, a public company co-founded by Glen Antle and Paul Huang in 1982. SDA's CEO Joseph Costello was appointed as CEO of the newly combined company."

Re:

[gweihir]

The US and Europe is way ahead in software. Is there any Chinese equivalent of chip design software (Cadence, Mentor Graphics), or CAD (AutoCAD, Pro Engineer, ANSYS), or graphics software (Adobe premier, Maya, etc.) No way for Chinese to catch up without investing billions over decades. I doubt they have the money.

Who do you think writes this software these days?