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Huawei's Android Replacement OS Will Launch in June

34 points by jmsflknr 7y ago

pgl 7y ago
Title has been updated to "Huawei says its Android OS replacement launch date is still undecided [Updated]", with the subtitle: > Earlier quotes stating June launch confirmed to be false
siffland 7y ago
"and will be launching its own database similar to Oracle soon." Wonder just how similar to Oracle it will be.
- BuildTheRobots 7y ago
  Considering a lot of the criticism of Huawei (once you get past the spying) is the abysmal quality and management of their code, I'd say they stand every chance of being similar. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/hcsec_huawei_oversight_board_savaging_annual_report/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/hcsec_huawei_oversi...
- rodneyzeng 7y ago
  It's called GaussDB. don't know details of it yet.
- rodneyzeng 7y ago
  If you can read Chinese check this: https://www.zhihu.com/question/263716125 https://www.zhihu.com/question/263716125 Some said the name changed to mppdb, based on postgreSQL but buggy...
  - Bombthecat 7y ago
    Well, if you don´t have competition, because of government laws... and potentially millions of millions of users... Good enough becomes a whole new meaning :)
- jpeter 7y ago
  Like the new chinese browser that was just a fork of chromium
ubersoldat2k7 7y ago
[Samsung] laughs in Tizen. [Microsoft] cries in Windows Mobile. [Palm] invites HP & LG to the group. [BB] has left
- UberofXplsgo 7y ago
  [Purism] secretly arrives late with Pure OS mobile
- ascii_only 7y ago
  [KaiOS] silently ships 100M devices.
Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
My wishful thinking would want Huawei to adopt opensource OS like Ubuntu Touch. It's stable, has recently became eligible for EU grant. All they have to do is open the kernel sources for their devices and support the community. They even run Anbox now, so Fdroid apps shouldn't be a problem. Apps are written in QT+QML with number of language bindings available. Then again, they might just use AOSP with their own Appstore for practical reasons.
- butz 7y ago
  What makes open source project eligible for EU grant?
  - Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
    I don't have knowledge about that, I just have information that UBPorts became eligible & I've read projects like PyPy received that grant.
Zigurd 7y ago
Huawei is big enough to buy any of the mobile OSs currently outside the top two and make it competitive, or make one based on an open source phone OS. The existing leaders are very refined, and one would have to spend tens of millions on development to make the grade. On the other hand, it's been long enough that the technology context designed-in to IOS and Android is out of date. If I were given the assignment, I'd look at making a LISP-like runtime designed with the characteristics of a modern app-store model (or better) in mind, running on some nonLinux kernel.
- hangonhn 7y ago
  I do wonder if that's even an option anymore given the US ban on tech sales to Huawei. Would they not just block the transaction?
  - Zigurd 7y ago
    Not all are US-based. IIRC Nokia's OS was open sourced and/or spun off. Palm is Canadian.
themagician 7y ago
Odds that this isn’t crap are slim, but the day will come when a major Chinese company pulls this off. Probably not today, but some day it will happen and then everything will be different. I can easily see a headline 5 years from now that says, “How Android went from 75% market share to less than 25% in just five years.”
- oaiey 7y ago
  Maybe this trade war will expose that China is long capable of running the show without the US.
  - zaphirplane 7y ago
    I wonder if Germany, France are thinking we need a plan one of ours could be next.
DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
What I wonder is why Huawei isn't building its operating system on top of Android Open Source Project. I can't find much detail on HongMeng (which translates to "Red Dream," I think), but it seems to be separate from AOSP. It seems to me that recreating Google's proprietary APIs and services on top of AOSP would be the most realistic way forward, and the most likely to gain traction with developers. The ban on doing business with Huawei shows that one person, the US President, can single-handedly decide tank a major corporation with the stroke of a pen. Relying on closed-source American tech is a liability in this sort of environment, so there might be a window of opportunity to build an open variant of Android (as opposed to just AOSP).
- HillaryBriss 7y ago
  > translates to "Red Dream" Wikipedia adds some meaning, but I don't know if this is what Huawei intends: HongMeng is a character in the Daoist text Zhuangzi and a metaphor for the "primordial world, primeval chaos" in Chinese creation myths. Like many Zhuangist names, Hong Meng is a word play, translated as "Mists-of-Chaos", "Vast Obscurity", "Big Concealment", "Vital Principle", "Natural Energy" and "Big Goose Dummy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Meng https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Meng
  - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
    I had only seen the name in Western media, without the characters. My guess was wrong, on both the characters! 鸿 (Hóng) means "large, huge, great," and 蒙 (Méng) means "mist." "Great Mist" is not a promising name for a codebase.
    - silversconfused 7y ago
      It's a tool for consuming cloud services. "Great mist" sure sounds rather cloudy to me.
BossingAround 7y ago
Here I am, secretly hoping that this all results in one of two things: 1) Huawei starts using a lot of opensource/linux (seems utterly unlikely now) 2) A good Android competitor comes to scene and splits the Android market Sigh...
UncleChis 7y ago
How about apps and adoption from developers? Those are much more important than an OS alone. As someone mentioned, we have bunch of OS aready, Tizen, Window Mobile?
- owens99 7y ago
  Tencent has already created a successful app ecosystem with WeChat mini-apps. I don't believe it will be too hard for Huawei to do the same (although it won't be easy either).
newnewpdro 7y ago
I'm looking forward to seeing what China can do in this space over the next decade. They have huge numbers of people, years ago I heard the trope "China has more honors students than the USA has students". If they can focus these huge resources on tasks like developing a modern operating system and apps ecosystem, the US will fall behind.
DeonPenny 7y ago
Like building out of an airplane, while building another airplane

34 points by jmsflknr 7y ago

pgl 7y ago

Title has been updated to "Huawei says its Android OS replacement launch date is still undecided [Updated]", with the subtitle: > Earlier quotes stating June launch confirmed to be false

siffland 7y ago

"and will be launching its own database similar to Oracle soon." Wonder just how similar to Oracle it will be.

BuildTheRobots 7y ago
Considering a lot of the criticism of Huawei (once you get past the spying) is the abysmal quality and management of their code, I'd say they stand every chance of being similar. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/hcsec_huawei_oversight_board_savaging_annual_report/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/hcsec_huawei_oversi...
rodneyzeng 7y ago
It's called GaussDB. don't know details of it yet.
rodneyzeng 7y ago
If you can read Chinese check this: https://www.zhihu.com/question/263716125 https://www.zhihu.com/question/263716125 Some said the name changed to mppdb, based on postgreSQL but buggy...
- Bombthecat 7y ago
  Well, if you don´t have competition, because of government laws... and potentially millions of millions of users... Good enough becomes a whole new meaning :)
jpeter 7y ago
Like the new chinese browser that was just a fork of chromium

ubersoldat2k7 7y ago

[Samsung] laughs in Tizen. [Microsoft] cries in Windows Mobile. [Palm] invites HP & LG to the group. [BB] has left

UberofXplsgo 7y ago
[Purism] secretly arrives late with Pure OS mobile
ascii_only 7y ago
[KaiOS] silently ships 100M devices.

Abishek_Muthian 7y ago

My wishful thinking would want Huawei to adopt opensource OS like Ubuntu Touch. It's stable, has recently became eligible for EU grant. All they have to do is open the kernel sources for their devices and support the community. They even run Anbox now, so Fdroid apps shouldn't be a problem. Apps are written in QT+QML with number of language bindings available. Then again, they might just use AOSP with their own Appstore for practical reasons.

butz 7y ago
What makes open source project eligible for EU grant?
- Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
  I don't have knowledge about that, I just have information that UBPorts became eligible & I've read projects like PyPy received that grant.

Zigurd 7y ago

Huawei is big enough to buy any of the mobile OSs currently outside the top two and make it competitive, or make one based on an open source phone OS. The existing leaders are very refined, and one would have to spend tens of millions on development to make the grade. On the other hand, it's been long enough that the technology context designed-in to IOS and Android is out of date. If I were given the assignment, I'd look at making a LISP-like runtime designed with the characteristics of a modern app-store model (or better) in mind, running on some nonLinux kernel.

hangonhn 7y ago
I do wonder if that's even an option anymore given the US ban on tech sales to Huawei. Would they not just block the transaction?
- Zigurd 7y ago
  Not all are US-based. IIRC Nokia's OS was open sourced and/or spun off. Palm is Canadian.

themagician 7y ago

Odds that this isn’t crap are slim, but the day will come when a major Chinese company pulls this off. Probably not today, but some day it will happen and then everything will be different. I can easily see a headline 5 years from now that says, “How Android went from 75% market share to less than 25% in just five years.”

oaiey 7y ago
Maybe this trade war will expose that China is long capable of running the show without the US.
- zaphirplane 7y ago
  I wonder if Germany, France are thinking we need a plan one of ours could be next.

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago

What I wonder is why Huawei isn't building its operating system on top of Android Open Source Project. I can't find much detail on HongMeng (which translates to "Red Dream," I think), but it seems to be separate from AOSP. It seems to me that recreating Google's proprietary APIs and services on top of AOSP would be the most realistic way forward, and the most likely to gain traction with developers. The ban on doing business with Huawei shows that one person, the US President, can single-handedly decide tank a major corporation with the stroke of a pen. Relying on closed-source American tech is a liability in this sort of environment, so there might be a window of opportunity to build an open variant of Android (as opposed to just AOSP).

HillaryBriss 7y ago
> translates to "Red Dream" Wikipedia adds some meaning, but I don't know if this is what Huawei intends: HongMeng is a character in the Daoist text Zhuangzi and a metaphor for the "primordial world, primeval chaos" in Chinese creation myths. Like many Zhuangist names, Hong Meng is a word play, translated as "Mists-of-Chaos", "Vast Obscurity", "Big Concealment", "Vital Principle", "Natural Energy" and "Big Goose Dummy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Meng https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Meng
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  I had only seen the name in Western media, without the characters. My guess was wrong, on both the characters! 鸿 (Hóng) means "large, huge, great," and 蒙 (Méng) means "mist." "Great Mist" is not a promising name for a codebase.
  - silversconfused 7y ago
    It's a tool for consuming cloud services. "Great mist" sure sounds rather cloudy to me.

BossingAround 7y ago

Here I am, secretly hoping that this all results in one of two things: 1) Huawei starts using a lot of opensource/linux (seems utterly unlikely now) 2) A good Android competitor comes to scene and splits the Android market Sigh...

UncleChis 7y ago

How about apps and adoption from developers? Those are much more important than an OS alone. As someone mentioned, we have bunch of OS aready, Tizen, Window Mobile?

owens99 7y ago
Tencent has already created a successful app ecosystem with WeChat mini-apps. I don't believe it will be too hard for Huawei to do the same (although it won't be easy either).

newnewpdro 7y ago

I'm looking forward to seeing what China can do in this space over the next decade. They have huge numbers of people, years ago I heard the trope "China has more honors students than the USA has students". If they can focus these huge resources on tasks like developing a modern operating system and apps ecosystem, the US will fall behind.

DeonPenny 7y ago

Like building out of an airplane, while building another airplane