Update: Huawei Issued Waiver by U.S. to Continue Software Updates & Hardware Maintenance
by Andrei Frumusanu on May 20, 2019 9:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Huawei
Update 05/20, 9pm: Following last week's ban and Google's suspension of business operations with Huawei, the U.S. Commerce Department has issued a new waiver for the company to continue purchasing limited goods from U.S. companies for maintenance purposes. Under the 90 day waiver, Huawei will be allowed to purchase hardware and software services to maintain current infrastructure as well as provide software updates for existing Huawei Android devices. As noted by Reuters, however, Huawei is still banned from buying parts and equipment for manufacturing new devices – meaning that as things currently stand, the company can only keep building affected products until their stockpiles run out.
While the waiver itself is initially only for 90 days, it can be extended as necessary by the U.S. Government.
Update 05/20: Huawei this morning has responded to reports and the U.S. Commerce Department’s ban, issuing the following statement:
Huawei has made substantial contributions to the development and growth of Android around the world. As one of Android’s key global partners, we have worked closely with their open-source platform to develop an ecosystem that has benefitted both users and the industry.
Huawei will continue to provide security updates and after-sales services to all existing Huawei and Honor smartphone and tablet products, covering those that have been sold and that are still in stock globally.
We will continue to build a safe and sustainable software ecosystem, in order to provide the best experience for all users globally.
This answers one of the most important questions for the moment – what happens to support for current devices – however it remains to be seen what this means for new Huawei smartphones, particularly the Honor 20, which is launching tomorrow.
Original: According to a recent report by Reuters, sources claim that Google is to suspend some business operations with Huawei due to the U.S. Commerce Department’s blacklisting of the company earlier in the week on Thursday.
Huawei is said to lose access to non-open source software and services provided by Google, which in layman terms means essentially all Google services besides baseline Android. Losing access to the Play Store would be a major blow to Huawei’s mobile operations besides the Chinese market where Google doesn’t operate any services.
Huawei will continue to have access to the version of the Android operating system available through the open source license that is freely open to anyone who wishes to use it.
But Google will stop providing any technical support and collaboration for Android and Google services to Huawei going forward, the source said.
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Source: Reuters
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DanNeely - Sunday, May 19, 2019 - link
It's open source. Google can't say you're not allowed to download/use it to anyone. That's the entire point of it being foss. Google can stop talking to Huawei about it. Google can stop accepting Pull Requests/etc from Huawei. But Google/etc can't stop publishing updated AOSP code any time the release a new device. And once the code is out in public Huawei is as free to download and do WTH they want with it as anyone else.basroil - Sunday, May 19, 2019 - link
"Open source" is not the same as no copyright or patent free. Most open source has the copyright retained by the original entity, and that's how they enforce that open source status (in GNU case, they actually sue people for copyright infringement for not releasing code). For patents it's pretty much the same thing, where the entity owns the patent but doesn't require royalties for authorized use.Because of import/export laws in the US though, simply letting them download code from any Google (or other company with US presence ) server would be enough to trigger export compliance violations (since android has encryption built in)
misc - Sunday, May 19, 2019 - link
Do you really think Huawei is banned from accessing the Linux kernel source code now? Or any other GPL software?Lord of the Bored - Monday, May 20, 2019 - link
Or that they would obey any such ban were it imposed?I mean, let's be honest. No one in China gives a flying crap if you're breaking any license, and Huawei can find several ways to get around any probable attempt at blocking them from most source repositories.
ZolaIII - Monday, May 20, 2019 - link
All licences begin with statement that code is open & freely available.maatriks - Sunday, May 19, 2019 - link
So the result might be that Huawei brings its own store to Europe which is full of Chinese-made applications with who knows what security and/or backdoors?Great idea!
jrs77 - Sunday, May 19, 2019 - link
And so it begins what I've been trying to tell people for years allready.The US or better said the US-companies hold 95% of all soft- and hardware-patents in the IT-sector. No computer in the world runs without intel, AMD, ARM, nVidia, Apple, Microsoft or Google.
The US knows this, and is starting right here, right now to pressure foreign companies or countries into submission in an effort to make them do what the US wants.
It's the beginning of the end of an empire, which will use every option to hold on to it's power.
maatriks - Sunday, May 19, 2019 - link
How many of those chips are made outside of US though? Especially the top of the line 10nm, 7nm etc chips. In addition,Samsung and Huawei have their own silicon divisions, Huawei flagship devices run on their own silicone and they make their own modems.jospoortvliet - Sunday, May 19, 2019 - link
Plus, ARM is British, the chip machines used by all these vendors are Dutch so it isn't 100% US. But it is a lot yes.phoenix_rizzen - Monday, May 20, 2019 - link
ARM is no longer British, they were bought by SoftBank back in 2016. They're still headquartered in the UK, but they're technically a Japanese company now.