A prominent independent developer known as Bubu has permanently shut down his open-source project to port .NET to HarmonyOS, accusing Huawei of playing both sides. The project, OpenHarmony-NET, used Microsoft's NativeAOT technology to bypass HarmonyOS's restriction on JIT compilation, proving that .NET and the cross-platform framework Avalonia could run on real HarmonyOS hardware. The final straw, Bubu says, was Huawei secretly outsourcing the technical approach to a domestic contractor while publicly negotiating with the official Avalonia team.
https://github.com/OpenHarmony-NET
Bubu's breakthrough opened the door for Avalonia to enter China's HarmonyOS ecosystem and pursue enterprise licensing. According to Bubu, starting last July, the Avalonia team used his proof-of-concept to approach Huawei for sponsorship and official certification, promising to hire Bubu to lead development. To protect the technology and support negotiations, Bubu slowed his open-source releases and switched to closed-source development.
But earlier this year, multiple outsourcing firms suddenly reached out to Bubu with lucrative offers to help them win a contract. He realized Huawei had seen his hand and decided a deep partnership with a foreign company wasn't necessary. Publicly, Huawei continued talks with Avalonia. Behind the scenes, it posted the technical path provided by Avalonia on its internal platform for open bidding, seeking a cheaper, more controllable domestic vendor.
The contract was won by iSoftStone, one of Huawei's largest outsourcing partners, which is now aggressively recruiting engineers to continue the work. Bubu declined all outsourcing invitations, sarcastically noting that if the contractor eventually open-sources the code to claim government subsidies for open-source projects, everyone will have the code anyway. "Why bother wading into this mess?" he said.
The incident reflects Huawei's pressure to rapidly fill gaps in the HarmonyOS NEXT ecosystem. The company prefers an industrial outsourcing model: legally extract a partner's technical approach, put it out for bid, and let a cheaper contractor build it. It's an efficient way to scale, but it guts the goodwill of open-source developers who contribute out of passion.