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Comment by zmmmmm | Hacker News Reader

They don't seem to be doing a very good job of communicating whether this is voluntary or mandated by the trade sanctions. It would seem to be terribly damaging to Google and Android if they can't convince OEMs that this is something extraordinary that no other OEM will need to worry about.

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According to the article they think this is mandatory but they are still reviewing it.

Which would mean that it could hit any Chinese company within days and companies from other nations within weeks/months. I doubt the US government will put a ban on South Korean manufacturers but I'm not sure if Samsung wants to take that risk.

Samsung is a top OEM in US unlike Huawei. Also South Korea is a big US ally.

Currently, but the US has already chastised South Korea for not spending enough on its defense as it relates to the US. South Korea capitulated I believe, but there remains the possibility that in South Korea's goal of being on agreeable terms with North Korea, it could have negative ramifications on the US/SK relationship.

I don't think it is highly likely it'll play out like that, but if I'm Samsung, I'm either throwing resources into Tizen or forking AOSP into a tailored version of the OS.

To suggest that China and South Korea are at the same receiving end of US' wrath tells me how twisted your thinking is.

Also, why don't you spare Samsung your strategy. Both you and they will be better without it.

you're taking that to an oddly personal level.

Obviously, the views of China vs SK are different in the US right now. Who is to say what the future holds if South Korea tries to make stronger ties with North Korea (considering NK blames the US for their current stalemate)? I'd argue that Samsung probably wants to have a contingency for things that are outside of their control, but yeah, out of wack thinking.

China does seem uniquely positioned to give SK what they want re: NK..

Apologies for my tone. However, I find your assertions pretty flagrant and not any basis in reality. South Korea has been a US ally for 50+ years. Samsung is even the top mobile OEM in US. I don't understand why suddenly Samsung now needs to build another OS because of US threats. This is so unfathomable to me that it is coming out in the caustic remarks I typed above.

> Apologies for my tone.

Okay, guess we can circle back...

> that it is coming out in the caustic remarks I typed above. > I find your assertions pretty flagrant and not any basis in reality.

And we're done here.

> It would seem to be terribly damaging to Google and Android if they can't convince OEMs that this is something extraordinary that no other OEM will need to worry about.

what makes you believe that this is something extraordinary? why other Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi or OPPO don't need to worry about such move?

Part of the push against Huawei in US, is because it also deals with networking equipment. Xiaomi and OPPO don't do that.

Android has cryptography in it for app signing and secure logins and such. Crypto is a real sensitive subject for export, even fairly standard implementations like what Android has. I'll bet that once the question is raised with government officials they will say that Google licensing crypto to (or just trusting certs from) Huawei is a hard no.

It would be real hard to make the Play store useful if you take away its main feature of getting trusted versions of apps. Ditto for most of Google's other products in Android.

Edit: For those of you who disagree with me, check out what happens now that Huawei is on the entity list (https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/policy-guidance/lists-of-p...). Most notable is that they are now subject to "license requirements are independent of, and in addition to, license requirements imposed elsewhere in the EAR." Even if Android is deemed no license required (NLR) to every other person in the world, the US government can still prohibit Google from licensing Android to Huawei. If you don't think that the government would use a petty excuse such as [easily available] crypto to deny the license, then you obviously haven't dealt with the government enough. The US government was treating crypto the same as nuclear technology up until the year 2000, and they would still prefer if US companies didn't give out source code on the internet. This isn't a bunch of forward thinking Silicon Valley types making the judgement call, it's a bunch of bureaucrats in suits that don't understand how the internet works.

Cryptography used in these products have been public for years.

Just because it's publicly available doesn't mean the US government won't try to embargo it. The government does silly things all the time.

The book "No Easy Day" became a New York Times best seller as soon as it was published (it's written by the SEAL that allegedly shot Osama bin Laden). The Department of Defense threatened to revoke the security clearances of military members that read the book because it contained classified details. It took a few weeks before they walked back their threats, because somehow nobody at the top realized how stupid it was to revoke security clearances over reading a bestselling public book.

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