It seems like Huawei has followed Goggle's own playbook.

When Goggle bought #Android as a startup, the OS was entirely Free Code, some of it forked from existing projects (notably the Linux kernel). This chapter from a decade-old computer science book captures the flavour of the times;

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-6131-5_1

Published 7 years after Goggle had started pitching its Open Handset Alliance as a rebel alliance against grApple's iThings, with a similar vibe to grApple's 1984 anti-IBM ads.

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This 2014 book, by Iggy Krajci and Darren Cummings, is worth quoting at length, especially for those too young to remember a time when we thought Goggle were valuable allies in the Free Code tech rebellion;

"With the introduction of Android, a single operating system removed the need for reimplementation of phone applications and middleware. The companies creating new devices could now focus much more intently on the hardware and underlying components."

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-6131-5_1

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"But these companies weren’t the only ones who benefited from the launch of Android; software developers could now release applications to multiple devices with very few changes to the underlying code base. This allowed developers to spend more time working on the applications these phones were running and create the rich and impressive applications that we are all used to"

#IggyKrajci, #DarrenCummings, 2014

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-6131-5_1

The neutrality of Android was the selling point.

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The promise of Android as a neutral common platform is a far cry from more recent events. Goggle has used its ownership of Android to exert greater and greater control over hardware vendors using it as the OS for their device;

https://www.channelfutures.com/connectivity/open-source-and-android-a-history-of-google-s-linux-based-mobile-os

More recently, over app developers too, "papers please, comrade" style;

https://keepandroidopen.org

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In 2026, it's painfully clear that developers make a deal with the devil when they make their app a business a wholly-owned subsidiary of Android (just as it's always been clear that's the case with iThings). To paraphase @pluralistic (paraphrasing Darth Vader), Goggle are changing that deal, and developers better pray they don't change it further;

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/01/fulu/#i-am-altering-the-deal

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#Android #enshittification

Maybe this was Goggle's gameplan for Android and OHA all along. Or perhaps these changes to the Android deal are in retaliation against the negative attention their Android monopoly has received from anti-monopoly regulators. They may even be a reaction to growing regulatory sabre-rattling from politicians trying to extract votes from leaning into the techlash. It's hard to say.

Either way, the enshittification of mainline Android has entered a terminal phase.

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Anyway, with all that background in mind, let's return to what I opened by saying about the HarmonyOS pivot; It seems like It seems like Huawei has followed Goggle's own playbook. Obviously the parallels are far from 1:1, but let me explain what I was getting at in the last few posts of this already overgrown thread.

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Like Goggle, Huawei was able to bootstrap their mobile OS using someone else's working code. In Goggle's case they bought the company, but mainly to poach the dev team (a practice common enough to have its own neologism; an acqui-hire). They could have just forked Android in-house, as Huawai has done.

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Goggle started with a fully Free Code OS, then started swapping out components for their own proprietary ones;

https://jacobin.com/2025/07/google-android-smartphones-open-source

Huawei has done the same with what's left of AOSP. See the Ars article in the OP, and this article from an India-based blog focused on Huawei;

https://www.huaweicentral.com/huawei-launched-harmonyos-next/

But this OS is for their devices. To Huawei's credit, they never pimped HarmonyOS as a vendor-neutral platform, got an industry locked in, then pulled the rug.

#Google #HarmonyOS

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Along with the recent spate of nonfree Source Available licenses, Android is the archetypal example of how Open Source misses the point;

https://abhas.io/open-source-still-misses-the-point/

What matters is no such whether independent developers can inspect the code without permission, although that is important. What matters is our freedoms, as citizens in an increasingly digital-mediated world, and whether the tech we use respects them.

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Re-using Android OSP is a cheap way to bootstrap a digital product that needs an OS. Shipping an Android version of an app makes it easily available to a huge potential audience. Code under Source Available licenses can be useful for rapid prototyping, or hobby projects without the slightest whiff of commercial use.

This is fine if you don't mind building your castle in someone else's kingdom;

https://howtomarketagame.com/2021/11/01/dont-build-your-castle-in-other-peoples-kingdoms/

But not if you want to keep it yours in the long term.

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