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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/O

by eis 7y ago

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.

neokantian 7y ago
A corporation is the prostitute of its controlling government. Similarly, corporate staff are the prostitutes of their corporation. Therefore, why not encourage these corporations to destroy each other?
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  I first thought you were going to point out that corporations are are powerless to resist pressure from spy agencies to compromise their products to gain economic/military leverage over other nations. Your point about unfriendly nations not merely treating these corporations as non-combatant tools, but instead as legitimate targets, was very interesting.
- kristianov 7y ago
  Then what? All institutions are bad and we should embrace anarchy?
  - pluma 7y ago
    Anarchism is good actually. But I don't see how the only way to fix this is to abolish all hierarchies. Having less jingoistic world leaders would be a start.
krn 7y ago
> 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.
- NotPaidToPost 7y ago
  Well, the majority of Android smartphones are by Chinese brands. The exception being Samsung. Things can change very quickly in that industry. Google may not be as secure as some believe they are.
  - oytis 7y ago
    They are majority because they offer a good price/quality ratio, where quality includes being integrated with Google services. I would bet if they try to go non-google, it's rather their market share will shrink than users would follow them.
    - dielll 7y ago
      Not in Africa where Chinese devices rule
- boudin 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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).
righteous 7y ago
The US is simply reciprocating the market access rules that China has applied to them for years.
duxup 7y ago
>that forces non-US companies to really look into alternatives Because the US doesn't do business with one company? I'm not sure I see that occurring for the reasons given.
Tsubasachan 7y ago
Right now in the US there is an anti free trade sentiment coming up. Capitalism is about making products where its cheapest and most efficient. The chance that companies will move their production to the US willingly is very low. The chance that the rest of the world is willing to pay a premium for products made in the US is very low. There is a reason why economists don't like tariffs very much.
rqs 7y ago
> 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? Don't just look at Huawei, ZTE also faced similar treatment last year. As result: > ZTE will employ a compliance team at its expense for 10 years and hold two compliance forums in China as part of US settlement for violating export controls[0] The U.S. maybe just trying to do the same to Huawei. But, if U.S. do this too much (maybe already), "Get rid of U.S. dependencies as much as possible" will be China's next goal. There was a lots of people in China believes "The 'China CPU' is waste of money, Intel/ARM is good enough". Today, I don't see anybody can still say that out loud comfortably. The potential good thing is, if China's investment on RISC-V[1] can eventually pays off, then maybe we will have some free and open ISA CPUs. [0] https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2150310/zte-replace-board-fire-senior-management-under-us-settlement https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2150310/zte-replace-board-... [1] https://riscv.org/2019/03/technews-article-china-actively-develops-its-own-cpu-can-risc-v-assist/ https://riscv.org/2019/03/technews-article-china-actively-de...

by eis 7y ago

neokantian 7y ago

A corporation is the prostitute of its controlling government. Similarly, corporate staff are the prostitutes of their corporation. Therefore, why not encourage these corporations to destroy each other?

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
I first thought you were going to point out that corporations are are powerless to resist pressure from spy agencies to compromise their products to gain economic/military leverage over other nations. Your point about unfriendly nations not merely treating these corporations as non-combatant tools, but instead as legitimate targets, was very interesting.
kristianov 7y ago
Then what? All institutions are bad and we should embrace anarchy?
- pluma 7y ago
  Anarchism is good actually. But I don't see how the only way to fix this is to abolish all hierarchies. Having less jingoistic world leaders would be a start.

krn 7y ago

> 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.

NotPaidToPost 7y ago
Well, the majority of Android smartphones are by Chinese brands. The exception being Samsung. Things can change very quickly in that industry. Google may not be as secure as some believe they are.
- oytis 7y ago
  They are majority because they offer a good price/quality ratio, where quality includes being integrated with Google services. I would bet if they try to go non-google, it's rather their market share will shrink than users would follow them.
  - dielll 7y ago
    Not in Africa where Chinese devices rule
boudin 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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).

righteous 7y ago

The US is simply reciprocating the market access rules that China has applied to them for years.

duxup 7y ago

>that forces non-US companies to really look into alternatives Because the US doesn't do business with one company? I'm not sure I see that occurring for the reasons given.

Tsubasachan 7y ago

Right now in the US there is an anti free trade sentiment coming up. Capitalism is about making products where its cheapest and most efficient. The chance that companies will move their production to the US willingly is very low. The chance that the rest of the world is willing to pay a premium for products made in the US is very low. There is a reason why economists don't like tariffs very much.

rqs 7y ago

> 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? Don't just look at Huawei, ZTE also faced similar treatment last year. As result: > ZTE will employ a compliance team at its expense for 10 years and hold two compliance forums in China as part of US settlement for violating export controls[0] The U.S. maybe just trying to do the same to Huawei. But, if U.S. do this too much (maybe already), "Get rid of U.S. dependencies as much as possible" will be China's next goal. There was a lots of people in China believes "The 'China CPU' is waste of money, Intel/ARM is good enough". Today, I don't see anybody can still say that out loud comfortably. The potential good thing is, if China's investment on RISC-V[1] can eventually pays off, then maybe we will have some free and open ISA CPUs. [0] https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2150310/zte-replace-board-fire-senior-management-under-us-settlement https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2150310/zte-replace-board-... [1] https://riscv.org/2019/03/technews-article-china-actively-develops-its-own-cpu-can-risc-v-assist/ https://riscv.org/2019/03/technews-article-china-actively-de...