
Huawei case prompts F/OSS reconsideration (German) - tannhaeuser
https://m.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/diginomics/lehre-aus-dem-fall-huawei-die-wiederentdeckung-der-freien-software-16198584.html
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eis
This war on Huawei is not about F/OSS but about depending on US suppliers.
Intel and AMD have to stop supplying processors to Huawei and there are no
viable F/OSS processors. Qualcomm will stop supplying SoCs. What does the US
think this will achieve? What exactly does the US want Huawei to actually do
to get rid of these bans? Do they think it will really hurt Huawei so much
that they will give in to US pressure? I don't think so. What will happen is
that Huawei and China in general will look to even more get rid of US
dependencies. They will double down on efforts to make their own processors.
They will get rid of Google and Microsoft proprietary software and if there is
a proprietary chinese alternative then that would be also on the table. ARM is
looking even more enticing now for notebooks. And once Huawei has replaced
Intel/AMD, others will do so too.

Huawei will hurt in the immediate future but after a few years they might come
out even stronger and the losers will be the US companies because their
government created an artificial situation that forces non-US companies to
really look into alternatives.

~~~
krn
> What does the US think this will achieve?

I don't see how Huawei can become #1 international smartphone brand without
having access to Google Play Store.

~~~
boudin
In China thr impact will be non-existant since android phones are shipped
without gapps. The main impact will be in Europe where Huawei has a strong
presence.

I guess that, in the worse case scenario, they will ship sone alternatives
services and app store, like in China.

If they would do that with a smooth transition out of google services, I can
see this working, as a lot of people don't care about google, as long as the
phone works.

~~~
pluma
Realistically speaking most Google apps I use as my daily driver could work
equally well as PWAs instead of native apps and the lack of "integrations" is
probably more data protection compliant anyway (because most of them seem to
only exist so Google can generate more data from users).

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gonvaled
Perfectly on point.

US companies have now been shown for what they really are: an extension of the
US government.

As such those companies can and will be used to make political points and
advance US interests.

Caveat emptor: using US technology has big risks.

~~~
simonh
They're subject to the US government sure, in the same way that Huawei is
subject to the Chinese government, which is why the US is so nervous about
allowing it's equipment into their critical network infrastructure. It doesn't
even matter if Huawei doesn't want to do it, if the Chinese government says
jump they will ask how high, as with Google in this case. As with any company
issued a lawful instruction by their government, for which there is no clear
legal challenge.

Bear in mind the US and China are currently engaged in an espionage war[1].
The US has an active network of informants in the Chinese government, while
the Chinese are actively conducting espionage and counter-espionage in the US
including stealing commercial secrets and suborning US intelligence operatives
to undermine the CIA's Chinese network. Google and Huawei are being caught in
a crush between the spy war and the trade war.

EU companies are no different. If Google was a German company and Germany
decided to impose trade sanctions on a non-EU country, they would have to
comply.

[1][https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-
canada-48319058](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48319058)

~~~
gonvaled
Security considerations have absolutely nothing to do with the Huawei ban. The
US has provided no evidence, and has refused the offer by Huawei to
collaborate in any investigation.

This is part of the trade war, and the fact that the US is openly lying about
the motives of the ban shows how risky the position of US customers have
become: there is absolutely no recourse.

And _even_ if the security claims were true (they are not), so what? Why I, an
European customer, must be affected by security concerns of a far away
country? Why is Huawei in a position to be forced to let down its customers?

Non-US companies must rethink the way they rely on an increasingly isolated
and belicose US.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
> Security considerations have absolutely nothing to do with the Huawei ban.
> The US has provided no evidence, and has refused the offer by Huawei to
> collaborate in any investigation.

I'm not sure we (the general public) have enough information to know either
way. There are legitimate reasons for not releasing supporting evidence about
counter-espionage operations. It's also entirely believable that the U.S.
executive branch (POTUS, CIA, etc.) would lie as you suggest.

~~~
simion314
The private researchers and companies around the globe could find the
backdoors and make them public. But we only see each month more and more
issues with US equipment (routers with default passwords set and remote access
enabled by mistake or convenience)

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RegW
> You may also no longer have access to the proprietary Google applications
> and services such as Gmail and Google Play

Hmmm. These are among applications that I just can't seem to remove from my
Sony Xperia. Perhaps, I should have a look at one of these Huawei spyware free
phones :-)

~~~
moviuro
Sony has been known for quite some time to publish helpful guides to install
AOSP on XPeria phones [0].

[0] [https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-
devices/guides/aosp-...](https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-
devices/guides/aosp-build-instructions/)

------
chvid
Yes. And couple that with the latest Nord Stream stuff. Fair to say that the
Germans are pissed of with the Americans at the moment.

And what will come of this?

A highly capable purely non-US produced phone using a set of cloud services
running in Europe on under european law. That is my guess.

Why do people assume that the Chinese military wants to spy on random european
citizens? If they can just prevent the US from their systematic data
collection, I am sure that they will see that as a major strategic win.

~~~
paganel
The "Nord Stream stuff" is also pissing off some of the Europeans, especially
those from Central and Eastern Europe who are geographically close to Russia
and wouldn't want Germany to be even more dependent on Russian gas than it
already is.

Because it has become tiring to always rely on the United States, half a world
away, whenever Russia feels like playing the imperialist card, instead of just
keeping them in check with the help of the Germans. And as long as the Germans
depend on Russian gas they will have no incentives of seriously saying no to
Russia. Source: me, living in an Eastern European country that is
geographically close to Russia.

~~~
chvid
Sure you can find europeans who are concerned about Nord Stream just as you
can find europeans who are against the use of Chinese technology. The question
is who gets to decide? Us or the americans.

~~~
oytis
The problem that EU international politics has been boiling down to two
options so far:

1) (Reluctantly) do what U.S. tells.

2) (Eagerly) subvert to whoever offers a good deal.

I'd really love EU having a consistent stance on human rights, democracy,
international law and free trade worldwide, and there are even some steps in
that direction (like European army project), but until we're not there, I'd
rather prefer option 1) to being corrupted by Chinese or Russian regime.

~~~
seppin
> 2) (Eagerly) subvert to whoever offers a good deal.

The amount of head bowing to Putin and Xi from European politicians is,
troubling.

------
johannkokos
English translation by bing translator.

[https://www.translatetheweb.com/?from=&to=en&refd=www.bing.c...](https://www.translatetheweb.com/?from=&to=en&refd=www.bing.com&dl=en&rr=UC&a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.faz.net%2faktuell%2fwirtschaft%2fdiginomics%2flehre-
aus-dem-fall-huawei-die-wiederentdeckung-der-freien-software-16198584.html)

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gonvaled
The situation is unbearable. We can not continue like this. US technology
companies have accumulated too much power.

The EU should start requiring contractual assurances by technology companies
for customers of US products, guaranteeing that:

\- data is 100% portable between providers

\- services will not be disrupted in case of political conflicts

Failing to provide these assurances should be punished with steep fines, and
eventually by forbidding said companies to operate on the EU markets.

~~~
marsRoverDev
Supposedly, the GDPR handles point #1.

------
ThinkBeat
>US companies have now been shown for what they really are: an extension of
the US government.

This is true, and the world has just seen a great demonstration of the risks
involved in using US companies.

As pointed out by others other countries could do this as well but none of
them could have such an immense impact as the US doing it.

Sure China is being targetted now, but other countries will wonder who is
next, especially with a president who acts as fast and arbitrarily as Trump

The most positive outcome of this mess would be if enough countries get scared
of being cut off that they work together to create alternatives. Or less so
they work independently to create local alternatives.

When it comes to CPUs though I am not so sure. The x86 line is a complicated
beast with lots of patents, and it would take a long time to build a fab to
create them.

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noobermin
Would it not be a deeply farcical if this spawned the year of the linux
desktop/cellphone.

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duxup
It would be interesting to see if Chinese companies would even be interested
in leading something like an Android fork....and follow the licensing rules.

It's not like they have to...

Meanwhile all these articles and folks play the game of "X country bad"...

~~~
simion314
>It would be interesting to see if Chinese companies would even be interested
in leading something like an Android fork....and follow the licensing rules.

There are plenty open source projects from China, so I do not see why you
think they do not know the benefits of the open source. The problem with
Android is that there is a large part that is closed source so they can't fork
that, if they reimploement it then they are not forced by any license to make
it open source.

~~~
oytis
> There are plenty open source projects from China

Any examples that got popular outside China?

~~~
yorwba
Vue? The creator is Chinese [https://evanyou.me/](https://evanyou.me/)

------
jokowueu
Too bad it's in German

