OpenHarmony Technical Forum Makes Its European Debut! OpenHarmony Embarks on a New Global Open-Source Journey

Recently, the first-ever OpenHarmony Technical Forum in Europe successfully concluded in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Centered on the theme of “OpenHarmony Technology Innovation and Ecosystem Practice,” the event delved into the latest advancements in operating systems, alongside technical research and ecosystem initiatives related to the OpenHarmony.

The forum was hosted by the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) of OpenHarmony Community and co-organized by Dresden Research Center, Europe Standardization & Industry Development Dept, and Amsterdam Research Center. It welcomed technical experts and academic scholars from across Europe and China. Nearly 100 developers attended in person, with the livestream drawing over 21,000 viewers online. The event gathered European and Chinese experts, with 100+ attendees and 21,000+ online viewers.

Haibo Chen, Founding Chair of OpenHarmony Technical Steering Committee, ACM Fellow, and IEEE Fellow, delivered the Opening Remarks and presented a keynote titled “OpenHarmony Technology Innovation and Ecosystem Practice.” He emphasized the vital role of software technology in global economic growth, highlighting intelligent terminal operating systems as the foundation for digital and intelligent transformation. The OpenHarmony TSC has brought together stakeholders from industry, academia, and research institutions to build influential collaboration platforms—such as the OpenHarmony Techical Conference and Technical Forum—while also launching technical research initiatives, competitions, livestreams, and project incubation programs. Chen highlighted the significance of intelligent terminal OS development, introduced OpenHarmony’s architectural design and core features, and shared the latest updates on its open-source technology, ecosystem, talent development, and industry adoption.

Juan Rico, Oniro Program Manager at Eclipse Foundation, delivered a talk titled “Paving the Way for a Global Open Source Ecosystem of Smart Devices: Oniro and OpenHarmony Cooperation.” He pointed out that for over a decade, smart devices have struggled with global interoperability due to technological complexity, fragmented manufacturing, and evolving regulations. Despite numerous attempts, no truly recognized reference framework has emerged. However, OpenHarmony—an open-source OS from China—has shown great potential to enable seamless connectivity. Through cooperation between the Eclipse Foundation and the OpenAtom Foundation, the Oniro OS, built on OpenHarmony, is beginning to gain momentum in Europe.

Jaroslaw Marek, Chair of the Oniro Steering & Marketing Committees and Head of the Open-Source Technology Center at Warsaw Research Center, gave a talk titled “Jumpstart Your Eclipse Oniro Journey: A Practical Guide for Developers and Device Makers.” He introduced the Oniro project’s history, its ecosystem development goals, and the motivations behind creating Oniro—such as avoiding technology silos, reducing development costs, and addressing IoT fragmentation. He also showcased development tools and resources, including the Eclipse Theia IDE, GitHub mirrors of the OpenHarmony codebase, QEMU virtualization environments, the Servo web engine, and React Native cross-platform support. Marek emphasized Oniro’s commitment to solving critical OS challenges for mobile terminals and bridging the gap in the IoT and smart device ecosystems through deep collaboration between the two foundations.

Yubin Xia, Director of the OpenHarmony Technology Club at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, gave a presentation titled “Securing Data for Mobile Devices.” He noted that mobile devices hold vast amounts of personal data that reflect users’ behavioral patterns and provide valuable resources for personalized services and local LLM training. This also raises significant data security and privacy challenges. Xia presented use cases for TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) technologies in mobile data protection, and shared updates on OpenTrustee (an open-source TEE OS) and Penglai (a RISC-V-based open-source TEE system). He also discussed confidential computing environments built on OpenHarmony and emphasized the need for secure and efficient LLM inference at the device level.

Kevin Boos, Principal Software Architect at Futurewei and the Techlead of Project Robius, presented “Bringing Pure-Rust App Development to OpenHarmony with Makepad + Robius.” He introduced the integration of the Makepad UI toolkit with the Robius platform abstraction layer to streamline Rust app development experience. Boos demonstrated complex applications developed using this framework, such as Robrix (a Matrix chat client) and Moly (a GUI client for AI LLMs across desktop and cloud), both built without any platform-specific code. He outlined current OpenHarmony support in Robius & Makepad and shared future plans to further enhance pure Rust application development.

Magnus Morton, Technical Expert at the programming language lab of Edinburgh Research Center, gave a talk titled “Cangjie for OpenHarmony Native Application Development.” He introduced the Cangjie language and its core features, showcasing how it can be used to develop native OpenHarmony applications. Morton shared research progress on advanced features like effect handlers—currently under development and set to be integrated into future versions of Cangjie.

Hatem ElKharashy, Software Developer at The Qt Company Oy, gave a presentation titled “Qt Quick 3D Solution and Advances in Vector Graphics Rendering.” He provided an overview of Qt’s content rendering capabilities across different graphic APIs used in the framework’s modules, particularly highlighting Qt Quick3D, which extends Qt Quick to support 3D rendering. With its comprehensive features and high performance, Qt Quick3D is approaching the caliber of professional 3D engines. ElKharashy discussed various vector graphics rendering solutions within Qt and highlighted the framework’s support for different vector formats, along with current progress and future plans for adapting Qt Quick3D for OpenHarmony.

Rakhi Sharma, Software Engineer at Igalia, presented “Building a Web Rendering Engine in Rust.” She explored the current state and future vision of the Servo rendering engine. Built in Rust, Servo offers memory safety and concurrency advantages, paving the way for distributed web ecosystems. Sharma detailed its technical strengths and shared plans for developing high-performance lightweight applications on OpenHarmony using the Servo engine.

Yang Liu, Vice President of HopeRun Software Co., Ltd, Member of the OpenHarmony Project Working Committee, Group leader of the OpenHarmony DevBoard-SIG Working Group, delivered a talk titled “HopeRun: Building a New OpenHarmony Industrial Interconnection Ecosystem.” He shared how HopeRun Software has contributed to the OpenHarmony ecosystem and transitioned from a “technology-driven” to a “business-driven” strategy. With its “OpenHarmony + NearLink” solution, HopeRun Software is expanding into sectors such as industry, education, and energy. , creating commercial distributions for various verticals that not only accelerate digital transformation but also lay a solid foundation for an interconnected intelligent future.

During the panel discussion, Yutao Liu, Director of Dresden Research Center, moderated a dialogue featuring Haibo Chen, Juan Rico, Jaroslaw Marek, Yubin Xia, Yang Liu, and Adrian O’Sullivan (Open Source Expert). The panel explored OpenHarmony’s value propositions overseas, its competitive differentiation, customer needs, emerging opportunities, and future trends. Representing perspectives from the OpenHarmony TSC, European open-source foundations, developers, academia, standards organizations, and industry partners, The panelists agreed that strengthening local developer communities, promoting collaborative innovation in technical standards, and deepening cross-regional cooperation are crucial for OpenHarmony’s growth in Europe. The panel highlighted OpenHarmony’s advantages in multi-device high-speed connectivity, its “One OS Kit for All” approach, open-source transparency, and industry-academia-research collaborative development—all of which align with European market needs and expectations. The discussion also acknowledged the importance of addressing challenges related to developer experience and application support within the OpenHarmony Community.

Other attendees included Lun Zhou, Director of Amsterdam Research Center; Jun Li, Director of Ireland Research Center; Jiazhe Xu, Director of the OpenHarmony TSC Secretariat; and Laiping Zhao, Director of the OpenHarmony Technology Club at Tianjin University.

The successful forum serves as an innovative example of cross-foundation collaboration advancing the global open-source practice of the OpenHarmony intelligent terminal operating system, marking a significant step in building OpenHarmony’s overseas open-source ecosystem. Looking ahead, OpenHarmony will continue to host ecosystem activities worldwide, share technical resources with global open-source community developers, collaborate on technological advancements, and promote the healthy development of the global open-source ecosystem.