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Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

Too bad they did not go with Linux, but like M/S and Apple I guess the want to "protect" their users.

But it does look interesting and they probably have a huge worldwide market that the US is now locking themselves out of.

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> Too bad they did not go with Linux

The initial smartphone version of HarmonyOS 2 from a few years ago was just an Android reskin,[1] despite claims to the contrary from Huwaei, and unlike HarmonyOS 1 for IoT devices. It remains to be seen if HarmonyOS for PC really is an independent OS, a fork or a reskin/distro of an existing OS.

1. https://www.techspot.com/news/88512-huawei-harmonyos-20-poor...

No version of HarmonyOS has ever been an Android reskin. HarmonyOS has always had an Android compatibility layer. HarmonyOS "NEXT" removes that compatibility layer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI5MzXmJVYQ&pp=ygUWaGFybW9ue...

Well, coincidentally, I read this news a couple of days ago about some new laptop offering by Huawei running Linux

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/05/huawei-matebook-x-pro-20...

Huawei always had good linux support on their Matebook series. Was pleasently surprised when i tried to run linux on the Matebook x Pro.

You said correctly, the US is locking itself out of this market. Huawei would have no incentive to create a new OS if it wasn't for crazy laws shutting them off the market. Now, Chinese business that live in the Huawei ecosystem have a great incentive to at least give a try to this new OS.

I think it is good that there is development that goes beyond tired Windows and Unix-like operating systems. We need more serious operating system architectures not less.

China blocked the US out of the software market on many fronts. Good for them, it helped them make software a part of their economy unlike the EU.

> Too bad they did not go with Linux,

TBH, Linux is nowadays too bloated to be taken as a reference. The BSDs look more promising as a starting point.

i can still remember that the Linux community blocked Russians from maintaining the Linux kernel

i guess they were "protect"ing their users

Additionally, I have always been curious to know whether the U.S. export ban applies to Linux and any other open source projects

The OpenBSD project at least believes that the US restrictions on the export of cryptography would have impacted them. Its why they banned US developers working on cryptography long ago.

> Of course, our project needs people to work on these systems. If any non-American cryptographer who meets the constraints listed earlier is interested in helping out with embedded cryptography in OpenBSD, please contact us.

https://www.openbsd.org/crypto.html

> Additionally, I have always been curious to know whether the U.S. export ban applies to Linux and any other open source projects

It does, the Linux kernel maintainers eventually said that's the reason for banning Russian maintainers.

> It does, the Linux kernel maintainers eventually said that's the reason for banning Russian maintainers.

As craftkiller interline in a sibling post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43927430): would this not rather imply that you should ban US-American maintainers (at least on some subsystems)?

If Russian maintainers write some Linux kernel code, this will cause no problem for a US export ban. On the other hand, if US-American maintainer does, it might.

According to Linus, “the ‘various compliance requirements’ are not just a US thing”:

https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=whNGNVnYHHSXUAsWds_MoZ-iEg...

I do not know the details myself.

How does that even work? By definition the code is "exported" to every country since it is open source.

It could be argued that you could ban imports from russia by not allowing them to contribute code, but an export ban is basically impossible.

You can't control where the code goes but you can sanction organizations for working with sanctioned orgs/individuals.

Given that US big tech funds a lot of orgs they will always have a big stake. One could for example filibuster certain Chinese or Russian features/proposals etc for a long time. Or at the last minute vote to do a 180% on a design proposals so US Rival have to redo an implementation. Standard office politics shit.

It seems they were following the sanctions, plenty of Russians that are not Zed patriots that left Ruzzia and they can freely work.

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