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China Upgrades from Microsoft Office
Badgerman writes "According to this Forbes article, fifteen Chinese ministries have started using a homegrown office software suite instead of Microsoft Office. The article also notes the Chinese government's encouragment of homegrown software and of a national Linux standard."
When Telstra in Australia started walking down the path towards replacing Microsoft Office with Star Office, Steve Ballmer made a uick trip out to make some incredible offers to the people concerned.
I wonder if teh ticket to CHina is booked yet.
Tp.
It does appear that the main driving force competing against Windows and associated applications is from other countries eager to save money. Once they show how it can be done, maybe the beancounters in American companies will follow their lead and take the linux plunge.
It would be interesting to see SCO attempt to try this in China. I wonder just how far they would (or would not) get.
Tp.
Some may remember some time ago when Germany also was going to yank MS products from being used by the German government. March 19th, 2001 - Two German government agencies have announced that they will discontinue the use of software made by Microsoft and other American companies. According to the German news publication Der Spiegel, both the German foreign office and the Bundeswehr (German Federal Armed Forces) have banned American software, saying that there are security concerns in using programs developed by other countries in sensitive applications. Instead, German companies such as Siemens and Deutsche Telekom will provide solutions (src: WinPlanet)
And now China... The government has been pushing the development of a homegrown software industry and a national standard for open-source Linux software to counter the spread of Microsoft in the last few years.
This is not a bad idea, and if others took the same route, MS could feel it down the road. Considering the problems associated with MS nowadays (even though it has actually been rampant for some time), with worms, and all sorts of security issues, how long will it be before some huge class action lawsuit based on MS negligently releasing shoddy products. Think about it... It's the kind of stuff that makes the NSA want to place backdoors on software, excuse being they're trying to secure products where vendors are failing.
I say, good for China on making that move, hopefully others will take cues from China, and send MS a message. No more shoddy work!!! Just imagine what will hapen if some investigation pointed to an MS product being at fault for the power failure. Oh boy would that be some crazy stuff to deal with for MS.
MoFscker
why else would Bill and Steve sell most of their holdings , its not like they need the money
Gates has sold over 6 million shares in August alone
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/m/msft.html
Well, this doesn't suprise me in the least.
Microsoft, a huge capitalist company, and China, a huge communist country, are direct opposites from each other.
The fact that China is dictatorial and repressive is besides the point. If you think about it, Linux and communism have a lot in common with each other, in terms of their ideals of shared ownership.
China and M$ may both be tyrants, but that is about all they have in common.
The unofficial
The company kingsoft in chinese only with no option to change to english it seems. Found a dictionary type program that is sold in an english version but no english pages.
However a few keyword sprung out. Linux for one. You see it seems this office suit runs on linux, this is significant because it is only hinted at in the forbes article. It means that they are not only replacing the office suite but the OS itself as well, since MS office doesn't run on linux they must have been using windows, and since this product seems only to run on linux and not on windows.
Can anyone with an understanding of chinese or with better googling skills confirm this (that wps office2003 runs only on linux)?
Also is this office product opensource or closed source?
And finally, is it any good?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I just noticed that they have a homegrown version for the Office Software ...
No comments on whether that is Open Source or Open Formats or not .... And no idea of whether it is going to be compatible with Open Office and MS Office ....
Unless the chinese are adopting the "Linux Mindset" I don't think that this is necessarily a good thing .... If they are forcing an almost failed software on more than a billion people just by regulatory fiat, how could it be good ?? ....
What they should be adopting is not something that is NOT Microsoft, but something that is "effectively" BETTER than MS Products .... I don't know that WPS Office even approaches there ...
and the chinese can't get there by rejecting the linux mindset and copying the Microsoft strategy of denying free choice ....
just my two cents worth ...
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Will all this work with GPL'ed software be lost because the Chineese govenment maynot respect the GPL license? They have shown in the past they don't have much consideration for others copyright laws. I hope this isn't the case.
Ironic, isn't it? A communist nation is doing more to protect the free market (by fighting a monopoly) than any of the supposedly capitalistic nations.
Seriously, when did we all hand our collective balls over to the monopolies and give up the whole idea of a "free market" and "encouraging competition"?
I really don't follow this. There was no such thing as a cohesive entity called "Europe" in the 18th century. In fact the very idea of a unified Europe is new and came out of the utter devastation of two world wars. For hundreds of years, the countries of Europe have been competing very fiercely against each *other*. Especially in the colonial age. In fact if one looks at the EU *today* many of the countries still don't really see eye to eye on many things.
China may have the US, Europe and Russia as rival military powers. But in the 18th century *all* of the major European countries were rival military and economic powers. There would be Britain, France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Prussia, Spain, Italy, Poland, Portugal etc. etc. Then of course there was China and India. In 1700 China at that time had 23% of the World's GDP and India had 23% (Europe was 23%, Japan 5% and the US 0%). And of course they were no small military powers either. This leads some historians to describe the "real" Asian crisis to be from 1820 to 1950 when Asia dropped from 58% of the world's GDP to 17% in 1952. I believe the Ottoman Empire was still going strong in the 18th century and that dominated the Middle East.
The figures are from a British historian called Angus Maddison in 1998. Calculations are based on purchasing power parity.
With this move, they can stop paying Microsoft licenses and look like they're legit. Heck, they even look trendy by supporting open source. Then someone can just go to the any subway station and pick up for $1US a copy of Windows, a copy of VMWare and a copy of Office.
Voila...They no longer need to pay MSFT. gain support from the open source community, and still run the software they're used to using.
Whaddya mean?! I live in the UK, I am a programmer, and a "Fully Legitimate, Shrink Wrapped edition of Windows XP, complete with Product Activation" [he says, carefully avoid the word 'copy' - watch what you say clueless123...], still costs me half a months salary :-)
"This is your life, and it's ending one second at a time."
Well I don't read chinese but my clicking instincts are pretty good. Here are some screenshots of the software. Looks just like Office. Very Impressive.. It looks like it runs on KDE.
Screenshots