- Huawei plans to partner with several companies to set up China’s first open source software foundation
- The foundation will be non-profit, completely public and open to all companies and software developers.
The ongoing US-China trade war is actually making Chinese companies stronger, by reducing their technological dependence on the US.
As an attempt to decrease its reliance on Google’s Android operating system, Huawei launched its own operating system, HarmonyOS, at the recent Huawei Developer Conference.
Now, the Chinese telecommunications giant plans to partner with several companies to set up China’s first open source software foundation to grow the nation’s open source software community, China Daily reported.
According to the report, the foundation may be established in one or two months at the earliest.
The foundation plan came after GitHub, the world’s largest host of source code, in July prevented users in Iran and other sanctioned nations from accessing portions of its service.
“If China does not have its own open source community to maintain, manage and host these open source codes, the domestic software industry will be very dangerous in case of irresistible factors,” Wang Chenglu, president of the Software Department at Huawei’s consumer business group, was quoted as saying.
According to Wang, the first open source software foundation in China will be non-profit, completely public and open to all companies and software developers.
China also has its own chip processor
Last month, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba launched its own processor based on the RISC-V ISA.
The first product from Alibaba’s chip-making subsidiary Pingtouge, the open source chip processor, dubbed as XuanTie 910, could potentially double chip performance while reducing costs of related chip production by more than 50 percent, Alibaba said.
In May, the US government blacklisted Huawei, blocking it from buying American products without its approval.
Following the US sanctions, UK-based chip-designer ARM was also forced to cut ties with Huawei as the company utilizes American technology in its products.
Thanks to Alibaba, now Huawei and many other Chinese firms can use XuanTie 910 without violating any export restrictions.
