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Huawei’s Yearslong Rise Is Littered with Accusations of Theft and Dubious Ethics

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Re: Huawei’s Yearslong Rise Is Littered with Accusations of Theft and Dubious Ethics

#61

Post by freeflight »

johnchristopher wrote: post #15
nailer wrote: post #11

Anecdote. May be untrue. Don't trust everything you read online, etc. A friend was a 7 year Ericsson employee (ending in 2012). In his opinion, Ericsson's networking equipment was universally acknowledged as having slow deployment times. Nokia's stuff was much faster to deploy. When Huawei hired the ex-Nokia engineers at 2.5x their previous salary, they asked them how Nokia did particular tasks. The engineer would sa…

I remember reading an article about how a Chinese company would hire European bakers to demonstrate how they bake breads ad nauseum until they could reproduce and automate each steps perfectly. The thinking was "they [chinese] have no imagination so they stick to known processes and don't deviate". Don't really know what to make of that.

I see it much more in the context of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.

Do you want to know how good authentic European bread is made? You ask European bakers to show it to you and then replicate.

Accusing a whole people of a "lack of imagination" is way too reductive a statement.

Case in point: I'm sure Chinese noodle-makers could show European cooks a trick or two, just like Europeans stole a trick or two about porcelain making from the Chinese.

Re: Huawei’s Yearslong Rise Is Littered with Accusations of Theft and Dubious Ethics

#62

Post by ineedasername »

dspwizard wrote: post #26
chvid wrote: post #4

I am amazed on how weak the accusations are. A ringtone? Some guy who thinks he can patent the idea of a camera attached to a smartphone? A hitpiece like this could have been written about just about any big tech company. And it is leaving out the story of how Huawei committed its true crime: That within some fields (5G notably) it is today a lot more advanced and cheaper than its competitors.

The most amusing part is that Huawei developed 5G tech on its own - nokia has shit and e/// is not better. Even in regards of 4G massive MIMO tech - Huawei is years ahead of other, they couldn't steal this tech from anyone - because one one had it.

It's rather more trivial to leapfrog an existing technology when you're able to steal & learn from all of the IP it's based on and then target your R&D efforts accordingly. You don't have to suffer the organizational difficulties of sunk costs, path dependency, legacy systems, etc. So even if their equipment is more advanced, they still got there on the back of massive IP theft.

Re: Huawei’s Yearslong Rise Is Littered with Accusations of Theft and Dubious Ethics

#63

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

liability wrote: post #41
ordu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it strongly reminds me the media of USSR. They switched narratives in a perfect unison with politics like that. Sometimes they even did it ahead of politics preparing ground for changes in politics. I wonder what the mechanics of it might be in a democratic society. It was easy to do in USSR: top-down structure allowed state to rule media by orders. But democracy is more nuanced than that I believe. At least I'…

> "I wonder what the mechanics of it might be in a democratic society. It was easy to do in USSR: top-down structure allowed state to rule media by orders." In this case I doubt there is any sort of formal command structure, or in fact any centralized orchestration at all. Rather what we're seeing is an emergent phenomenon, not unlike fish schooling or birds swarming. All the actors involved are taking cues from thei…

Well, in socialist countries there was no index that would spell out explicitly what is strictly verboten. Ordinary people were expected to know that via hints and rumours. Well if the official media was calling genetics nasty names then that was a strong indicator that genetics is verboten. I guess that the media used to be more directly orchestrated.

Re: Huawei’s Yearslong Rise Is Littered with Accusations of Theft and Dubious Ethics

#64

Post by ummonk »

ineedasername wrote: post #62
dspwizard wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most amusing part is that Huawei developed 5G tech on its own - nokia has shit and e/// is not better. Even in regards of 4G massive MIMO tech - Huawei is years ahead of other, they couldn't steal this tech from anyone - because one one had it.

It's rather more trivial to leapfrog an existing technology when you're able to steal & learn from all of the IP it's based on and then target your R&D efforts accordingly. You don't have to suffer the organizational difficulties of sunk costs, path dependency, legacy systems, etc. So even if their equipment is more advanced, they still got there on the back of massive IP theft.

Isn't this why most people on HN and in the tech community writ-large oppose patents in tech? Faster innovation happens when IP protections aren't holding back innovation.

Re: Huawei’s Yearslong Rise Is Littered with Accusations of Theft and Dubious Ethics

#66

Post by tw04 »

chvid wrote: post #8
mschuster91 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Going further back, in the world of automotive, when a special product comes out, e.g. the MINI in the UK, the first thing Ford does is to buy one and take it to pieces, cost the whole package and work out how it is done. Everyone does this, here's an article from 2006 detailing this: https://www.wired.com/2006/02/teardown/ The point is, this kind of behavior - taking a stock product and disassembling it to its pie…

> The real theft that mainly originates from China (no matter if via the "legal" route of buying up Western companies or force "technology transfer" via joint ventures or via hacking) Honestly; how can you call it "theft" if it is done via buying or a joint venture?

Depends on how you view theft. If China has been artificially keeping their currency low while the government has been pouring cash into companies to allow them to sell at a loss - causing competitors to declare bankrupcty, then buying up the assets. I'd call that "stealing" from both shareholders and the insert country of origin of the asset they're acquiring.

Re: Huawei’s Yearslong Rise Is Littered with Accusations of Theft and Dubious Ethics

#67

Post by whenchamenia »

ummonk wrote: post #64
ineedasername wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rather more trivial to leapfrog an existing technology when you're able to steal & learn from all of the IP it's based on and then target your R&D efforts accordingly. You don't have to suffer the organizational difficulties of sunk costs, path dependency, legacy systems, etc. So even if their equipment is more advanced, they still got there on the back of massive IP theft.

Isn't this why most people on HN and in the tech community writ-large oppose patents in tech? Faster innovation happens when IP protections aren't holding back innovation.

Are you inferring that we let their continued violation a system we both agreed to, while following it ourselves, slide, because it kinda resembles your philosophy from a hazy distance?

Re: Huawei’s Yearslong Rise Is Littered with Accusations of Theft and Dubious Ethics

#68

Post by liability »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #63
liability wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I wonder what the mechanics of it might be in a democratic society. It was easy to do in USSR: top-down structure allowed state to rule media by orders." In this case I doubt there is any sort of formal command structure, or in fact any centralized orchestration at all. Rather what we're seeing is an emergent phenomenon, not unlike fish schooling or birds swarming. All the actors involved are taking cues from thei…

Well, in socialist countries there was no index that would spell out explicitly what is strictly verboten. Ordinary people were expected to know that via hints and rumours. Well if the official media was calling genetics nasty names then that was a strong indicator that genetics is verboten. I guess that the media used to be more directly orchestrated.

Centralized orchestration is certainly a possibility. I think it's far from certain though, because the observed effect of uniform messaging could also be explained as emergent behaviour. Centralized coordination is probably more likely in some countries, and emergent swarming seems more likely in others.

But either way, the end result is pretty similar.

Re: Huawei’s Yearslong Rise Is Littered with Accusations of Theft and Dubious Ethics

#69

Post by ineedasername »

ummonk wrote: post #64
ineedasername wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rather more trivial to leapfrog an existing technology when you're able to steal & learn from all of the IP it's based on and then target your R&D efforts accordingly. You don't have to suffer the organizational difficulties of sunk costs, path dependency, legacy systems, etc. So even if their equipment is more advanced, they still got there on the back of massive IP theft.

Isn't this why most people on HN and in the tech community writ-large oppose patents in tech? Faster innovation happens when IP protections aren't holding back innovation.

I would myself advocate for looser patent grants. It seems wasteful that separate companies must redundantly spend resources treading down the same worn pathways. However, a system that circumvents that redundancy would require radically different & collaborative R&D arrangements to function equitably. In its absence, and in the presence of a system where single entities spend their own resources on development, IP theft is damaging. It assists in undercutting the bottom line and even driving out of business those companies that have been stolen from.

Re: Huawei’s Yearslong Rise Is Littered with Accusations of Theft and Dubious Ethics

#70

Post by liability »

ummonk wrote: post #64
ineedasername wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rather more trivial to leapfrog an existing technology when you're able to steal & learn from all of the IP it's based on and then target your R&D efforts accordingly. You don't have to suffer the organizational difficulties of sunk costs, path dependency, legacy systems, etc. So even if their equipment is more advanced, they still got there on the back of massive IP theft.

Isn't this why most people on HN and in the tech community writ-large oppose patents in tech? Faster innovation happens when IP protections aren't holding back innovation.

A level playing field is more important than any hairbrained theories I might(do) have about IP law. Far worse than tech patents and copyright are tech patents and copyright that only apply to some companies but not others.
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