from Hacker News

Open Source Could Be a Casualty of the Trade War

by UkiahSmith on 6/22/19, 1:51 PM with 74 comments

• by xvilka on 6/23/19, 3:29 AM

  Quite the opposite - it makes more and more companies to consider open source. RISC-V is all rage now, people turning their eyes to open source EDAs. I hope with the help of SymbiFlow[1], Chisel[2]/FIRRTL[3], and other similar tools the duopoly of Intel (Altera) and Xilinx will come to its end. There is also an interesting initiative[4] to make ASIC design as affordable (in terms of time, knowledge, and money) as possible. And using KiCad[5] for simple projects can help for small businesses.

  [1] https://symbiflow.github.io/

  [2] https://github.com/freechipsproject/chisel3

  [3] https://github.com/freechipsproject/firrtl

  [4] https://theopenroadproject.org/

  [5] http://kicad-pcb.org/

• by baybal2 on 6/22/19, 5:56 PM

  A contact at Foxconn just told me yesterday that Apple is genuinely serious about leaving China completely.

  Apparently, Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Cook last week, and extended an offer of a tax break and other "relocation packages" on the size "not seen in human history" if Apple moves to USA.

  Hearing things like that keeps reminding me that Taiwanese engineering fraternity is one of worlds best intelligence agencies :)

• by DennisP on 6/22/19, 9:25 PM

  Considering that two U.S. appeals courts have ruled that source code which was classed as a munition was protected by the First Amendment, I'm not too worried just yet.

  Of course we have a lot of new judges so who knows.

• by cyborgx7 on 6/22/19, 2:58 PM

  The article takes a while to get to the point made in the title but the way to counteract this seems to be, get the infrastructure for open source out of America before it's too late. In contrast to the ARM example, the US doesn't really have any leverage against a volunteer open source project not within its borders.

• by nickpsecurity on 6/22/19, 6:12 PM

  “through powers granted via the “EAR” (Export Administration Regulation 15 CFR, subchapter C, parts 730-774), along with a sometimes surprisingly broad definition of what qualifies as export-controlled US technology.”

  Boom! I told people they might do that back in the crypto discussions. Custom crypto and high-assurance security are still munitions with only a few things re-classified such as mass-market, one-size-fits-all software and use of ciphers in browser (https). This is what they might do to the rest with the leverage if it was ever truly threatening. They’re already doing it to companies over Huawei.

  I also speculated they might have done this to get backdoors in products. A combo of offering payment and threats together. We know they do the payments. I don’t know if they do export threats, though.

  “some independent security research would have already found and published a paper on this. Given the level of fame and notoriety such a researcher would gain for finding the “smoking gun””

  Bunny is being really naive here or maybe doesn’t understand computer espionage. Most subversion must be done in a way that doesn’t look like subversion. The system just has to be remotely exploitable. The best route to that is to intentionally leave in memory safety bugs or a configuration that enables privilege escalation. Hackers find those all the time in all kinds of devices. They say, “Hey, they just made a common mistake.” Maybe it was there on purpose. We won’t know.

  “It’s no secret that the US has outsourced most of its electronics supply chain overseas. From the fabrication of silicon chips, to the injection molding of plastic cases, to the assembly of smartphones, it happens overseas, with several essential links going through or influenced by China.”

  And this is why what the U.S. government is doing is incredibly stupid. You could substitute other industries in here. It’s a smarter move to minimize one’s dependency on a country before pissing that country off in a way that can prevent them getting what they depend on.

• by galaxyLogic on 6/23/19, 1:49 AM

  The weakness of freedom of speech is it also allows freedom of lying. It's the cost of it. I think there could/should be an amendment to constitution that prevents government officials from consciously lying to people

• by RickJWagner on 6/23/19, 1:19 AM

  No way. Open source will (keep) finding a way. It's a force of nature.

• by Merrill on 6/23/19, 12:58 PM

  A trade war may stimulate Open Source. Each adversary might subsidize the development of Open Source equivalents of the other's key proprietary products and services protected by Intellectual Property.

• by NicoJuicy on 6/23/19, 7:13 AM

  I actually hope that software ( open source) could be more like trade.

  Eg. Follow human rights, No great firewall and you can use it.

  Global trade has done a lot of good for the world, in general, there hasn't been any big war in the last 70 years.

  Why: 996

• by writepub on 6/22/19, 8:06 PM

  > If Huawei has truly engaged in a long-term pattern of conduct significantly adverse to national security, surely, some independent security research would have already found and published a paper

  Presenting non sequitur as evidence has become par for the course. Let's step back to one day before the heartbleed bug was discovered in ssl libs, when a similar argument could've been made regarding the ssl library's security. Only to be disproven a day later.

• by slim on 6/22/19, 6:54 PM

  why is ARM doing business with Huawei? they don't manufacture their SOCs or do they?