Photo: Huawei

Chinese tech giant Huawei said on Tuesday that it will donate its self-developed openEuler operating system (OS) to the OpenAtom Foundation, China's first open source foundation, marking the OS' evolution from a company-led open source project to industrial co-construction and community autonomy.

The move will help get together more of industrial power to build a stronger domestic digital infrastructure in a faster pace, analyst said.

Huawei announced the move at the ongoing operating system summit held in Beijing from Tuesday to Wednesday.

After the donation, Huawei will continue to invest in the open source system, the company said.

Huawei concept stocks surged in the morning session following the announcement. Shares of information technology solutions provider Changshan Beiming Technology were up 8.11 percent as of press time.

Wang Zhijun, vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at the summit on Tuesday that using open source as a starting point to build the next-generation OS is a useful attempt to build a digital foundation for economic and social development.

Huang Haifeng, a veteran tech analyst, told the Global Times on Tuesday that as the openEuler system becomes public, it will better empower digital transformation for more companies and computing developers.

"Huawei itself will benefit from the move as more water [compared to openEuler application] will push the boat [Huawei] faster," said Huang.

Huawei launched the openEuler OS in September, which is another self-developed OS following the company's HarmonyOS platform, as it tries to "solve the domestic stranglehold problem of lacking its homegrown OS in basic technology," and build a full-scenario covered ecosystem to prepare for more US bans.

The openEuler OS can be widely deployed across a range of equipment such as servers, cloud computing and edge computing. Its application scenarios cover Information Technology, Communication Technology and Operational Technology to achieve unifying an operating system with multi-device support.

The OS has received positive responses from the industry since its source was open. More than 300 companies and nearly 10,000 community developers have joined to date, making it the most dynamic open source community in China, said Wang Tao, Huawei's managing director and president of ICT products and solutions, during the summit on Tuesday.

In addition, the Chinese firm also announced the launch of "openEuler Talent Development Acceleration Plan," aiming to encourage more college teachers and students to join the ecosystem. The plan will cover 500 colleges and universities within three years and cultivate one million openEuler talent.