How Huawei Leveraged Open Source to Become a Leading ICT Software Provider

Open Source Transformation

In a short time, Huawei shifted from being the world’s biggest device manufacturer to one of the largest ICT software solution providers, thanks to its foresight that software now drives the world—from SDN and NFV to cloud computing and IoT.

The Linux Foundation partners with thousands of organizations, including Huawei, to build the greatest shared technology assets in history, underpinning billions of dollars of value on the Linux platform.

Linux runs the majority of global stock markets, dominates mobile and embedded systems, and powers almost all high‑performance computing systems. Every day, an average Linux project adds 10,800 lines of code, removes 5,300 lines, and modifies 1,800 lines, resulting in a net daily change of about 7,300 lines.

Open source has become inevitable. Over 3.8 million contributors have created 31 billion lines of code across public repositories, attracting billions of dollars of investment; in Silicon Valley alone, hundreds of companies backed by investors include ten valued at over $1 billion.

The first generation of open source was simple—free alternatives to patented technologies like Linux and MySQL. Today, the ecosystem has evolved, encompassing big‑data frameworks such as Hadoop and container‑cloud technologies that gave rise to Kubernetes and Docker, making cloud’s future inseparable from open source.

Open‑source projects now exist at almost every layer of the software stack, leading in innovation, developer adoption, and development speed—from data‑plane services like Open vSwitch to orchestration platforms such as OPEN‑O. Huawei and China Mobile announced an OPEN‑O collaboration at the 2016 Mobile World Congress, with China Mobile’s future OSS built on three open‑source JavaScript frameworks, including server‑side JavaScript.

This creates an organic form of innovation where thousands of companies and developers compete to produce the best code. The Linux Foundation hosts most of these projects, aiming to accelerate both upward and downward innovation for safer, more stable software.

More than 20 top tech firms, including Intel and Huawei, work with the foundation to guide developers toward writing more secure code, better threat modeling, testing, and stronger disclosure policies, ultimately reducing software vulnerabilities in commercial products.

Building an Excellent Ecosystem

The Linux Foundation’s original purpose is to enable open‑source projects to collaboratively create an outstanding ecosystem and accelerate expansion. Companies investing in open source recognize that software code and intellectual property will become freely accessible for decades. The foundation helps thousands of organizations manage IP within software‑centric industries, improving open‑source development speed and protecting valuable assets.

Finally, the Linux Foundation and companies like Huawei have launched training and certification programs to ensure developers can meet growing open‑source adoption demands.

Outstanding Contributors

Huawei is a distinguished contributor to the open‑source movement. Beyond Hadoop, Huawei is a founding member and top contributor to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and ranks among the top four contributors to the Spark project, a fast, general‑purpose big‑data engine.

More than five years ago, Huawei established a dedicated open‑source team, selecting suitable projects for its products, integrating open‑source development into procurement and engineering processes, and fostering a virtuous innovation cycle that many other companies have emulated. Significant investment in planning and training has proven effective, as Huawei, like other leading tech firms, understands that no single company can handle the massive software development workload alone.

Collectively, we must work together to build the greatest shared technology assets in history, recognizing that collective intelligence surpasses individual effort; great companies leverage open source to create ecosystems.