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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

They already have their own Cisco: Huawei

Cisco went a few rounds with them in the past, accusing and suing Huawei for essentially reverse engineering their products.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/29/cisco_huawei_case_en...

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Not just reverse engineering, but using an outright copy of the source code. I have worked at multiple huawei competitors (and even some non direct competitors) where some engineers joined and suddenly disappeared after it was discovered that they were still on the huawei payroll.

When I lived in Beijing several years ago, I interviewed a guy for a software development position. He worked for a network equipment provider (not Huawei). When I asked him about his work, he told me that his company based their router software on the same leaked version of Cisco's router OS that Huawei had used several years prior (IIRC, there was a court case over this, and Huaiwei switched to their own software).

Based on my experience, the Chinese now have the breadth, depth, confidence, and money to develop complex software on their own, so I expect to see less of this in the future.

As per this article, the Chinese can make a fair point to the US government that so long as Huawei is barred from the US, then there's nothing to discuss about telecom infrastructure equipment.

But I hope and wish the US and other Western governments will press for more media openness in China with the goal of ultimately getting China to tear down their system of censorship and the Great Firewall. Because, ultimately, I believe it hurts modern China more than it helps.

I was chatting once with somebody at one of Cisco's competitors. He mentioned that, some time ago, Huawei had copied there router designs down to the English silk screening on the PCBs. My friend also does a lot of contracting for them. They're famous for not paying their bills.

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