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Huawei's theft of Cisco's IP is common knowledge, and well documented. https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-correcting-the-record https:/

Huawei's theft of Cisco's IP is common knowledge, and well documented. https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-correcting-the-record https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-c...

v-yadli 7y ago
yeah, STRCMP. And I wouldn't call it "documented", unless it provides references to the official reports. The link points to a Cisco site, and what would you expect Cisco to say? here's a legacy archive of the relevant articles from a Chinese third-party site: http://tech.sina.com.cn/focus/cisco_huawei/ http://tech.sina.com.cn/focus/cisco_huawei/ I'm a bit surprised it is still kept intact after some 20 years. You could see trails of history -- mind the "Google it" header at the top.
- trepanne 7y ago
  Ever used one of those Huawei routers? If you had, I think you'd be in little doubt about the extensive copying of IOS. Also the documentation, CLI... the entire business model was being a cheaper Cisco clone. You can pull down tons of news reports and even the court filings if you are motivated, but why? Huawei themselves publicly admitted to stealing Cisco's code, the only disagreement was about the scope. I suppose we should just accept at face value their claims, when caught, that it was just a little bit, and only by accident. Cisco is the only source for any part of the actual expert opinion. Huawei naturally declined Cisco's invitation to permit publishing the entire report; one can imagine how unfavorable it would be. Those published excerpts are smoking guns - concrete demonstration of wholesale cutting&pasting of Cisco source code, down to whitespace and comments, outside the scope of what Huawei was willing to admit to. By that time, though, Huawei had already achieved commercial success, and could afford to start cutting fewer corners & better comply with international law. So their plan worked pretty well. Huawei is right up there with semiconductor mfg as a poster child for government-condoned (even government-assisted) industrial espionage as a tool to bootstrap strategic industries. I'm not convinced that Huawei will backdoor their 5G gear, but I'm definitely on board with the plan to bar them from US commerce. Why play fair with opponents who cheat?
  - v-yadli 7y ago
    I don’t have much experience with consumer grade Cisco routers so there’s not much I can comment on this. I do use a Huawei fiber modem+router 2-in-1 day to day. The router firmware is crap and I have to do some modifications, and effectively disable the router part. The UX is more aligned with the other cheapos in the Chinese market, I think. It’s unlikely Cisco would ship something like that. I’m not sure if I’d be convinced by what Cisco says, though. The author was direcltly involved in the case two decades ago btw. Huawei admitted the usage of Cisco code, and promised to remove that part. Case closed. However the article is referring to other parts (strcmp and the like). We have limited neutral information, and in this case, I think, should remain in doubt.

v-yadli 7y ago

yeah, STRCMP. And I wouldn't call it "documented", unless it provides references to the official reports. The link points to a Cisco site, and what would you expect Cisco to say? here's a legacy archive of the relevant articles from a Chinese third-party site: http://tech.sina.com.cn/focus/cisco_huawei/ http://tech.sina.com.cn/focus/cisco_huawei/ I'm a bit surprised it is still kept intact after some 20 years. You could see trails of history -- mind the "Google it" header at the top.

trepanne 7y ago
Ever used one of those Huawei routers? If you had, I think you'd be in little doubt about the extensive copying of IOS. Also the documentation, CLI... the entire business model was being a cheaper Cisco clone. You can pull down tons of news reports and even the court filings if you are motivated, but why? Huawei themselves publicly admitted to stealing Cisco's code, the only disagreement was about the scope. I suppose we should just accept at face value their claims, when caught, that it was just a little bit, and only by accident. Cisco is the only source for any part of the actual expert opinion. Huawei naturally declined Cisco's invitation to permit publishing the entire report; one can imagine how unfavorable it would be. Those published excerpts are smoking guns - concrete demonstration of wholesale cutting&pasting of Cisco source code, down to whitespace and comments, outside the scope of what Huawei was willing to admit to. By that time, though, Huawei had already achieved commercial success, and could afford to start cutting fewer corners & better comply with international law. So their plan worked pretty well. Huawei is right up there with semiconductor mfg as a poster child for government-condoned (even government-assisted) industrial espionage as a tool to bootstrap strategic industries. I'm not convinced that Huawei will backdoor their 5G gear, but I'm definitely on board with the plan to bar them from US commerce. Why play fair with opponents who cheat?
- v-yadli 7y ago
  I don’t have much experience with consumer grade Cisco routers so there’s not much I can comment on this. I do use a Huawei fiber modem+router 2-in-1 day to day. The router firmware is crap and I have to do some modifications, and effectively disable the router part. The UX is more aligned with the other cheapos in the Chinese market, I think. It’s unlikely Cisco would ship something like that. I’m not sure if I’d be convinced by what Cisco says, though. The author was direcltly involved in the case two decades ago btw. Huawei admitted the usage of Cisco code, and promised to remove that part. Case closed. However the article is referring to other parts (strcmp and the like). We have limited neutral information, and in this case, I think, should remain in doubt.