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."

Comments

How long before Ballmer is on a plane?

[Tpenta]

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.

Re:How long before Ballmer is on a plane?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would pay to see that.

There is no way that would become a WTO issue. The Chinese government is not outlawing Office, it is merely developing its own completely different product that does the exact same thing.

China has stated and made good on the threat of developing their own processors, their own technology, their own IT industry. They are keeping the money where it belongs, in the country.

You people bitch and moan about how communist China is a plague, yet bitch and moan when they start to develop the slightest glimmer of innovation and drive. You don't want the Chinese to be capitalists, you want the chinese to be your little boot-licking lackey dogs who turn out your cheap ass consumer goods in sweatshop like factories for a pittance. Wake up. There's a revolution going on in China, and it's only going to be for the better of Chinese society, and at the current rate, a detriment for the Western World. In ten years China's going to be as communist as Bush is going to be a personal privacy advocate wearing tye-dyed shirts and beads.

Re:How long before Ballmer is on a plane?

[archen]

China isn't only developing their own infastructure, it looks like they're actually working on positioning themselves in competition with everything that's in place now.

Using their own processor, their own linux distro, among other things they seem to be comming up with (DVD standard etc). I'm actually glad too. As the west ends up strangled by power struggles for control over the computer (MS) and control over your media (DRM), China may very well be the last hope feilding open technology. Sad to say, but because of our own short sightedness; it may very well be this openess that gives them the advantage.

International Competition for Microsoft

[vbprgrmr]

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.

Re:International Competition for Microsoft

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

so what are they spending all that money on?

First Class seats on planes to various countries to convince them to keep buying their products...

Re:International Competition for Microsoft

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Another reason appears to be security--and I don't mean the virus kind, I mean the "NSAKEY" kind. This was also mentioned in the article.

The USA's aggrandizement of late has made a lot of our allies nervous, and a lot of our future enemies paranoid. If I was the Chief of IT in another superpower, I would indeed be very paranoid about the use of a product with which a) I ran all of my intelligence and administration tools, b) I couldn't see the internal workings of, c) had the capability of communication with a foreign power.

Imagine if Mercedes was the only source for radio devices during WWII; the technology wasn't open enough for the US to build it themselves. Do you think the US would have happily accepted radio shipments from Germany, and depended upon them for their secure communications? Or would the US do their all to put in place a replacement that they could control themselves?

The only way to make security guarantees that would satisfy me would to give me the code such that I can compile the app myself, which MSFT hasn't been willing to do, even with their Open program. There's nothing that Ballmer could say to me that would convince me otherwise--nothing that would let me sleep at night with my children in the Armed Service.

I think the war in Iraq will prove to be very good for Linux.

I so wish...

[JamesP]

Chinese President in his office...
Picks up phone...

"Who's this?"

"Er. My name is Daryl McBride, from SCO cororation...Is it true that there are 1 billion computers using Linux in China?"

"Yes"

"So that will be 699 billion dollars, please..."

"Ok, we'll be sending the check any time soon"

(hangs and calls defense minister)

"Capture this McBride immediatly (ha,ha,ha)"

Re:I so wish...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr McBride,

Never charge more then it will cost to have you killed.
~Ancient Chinese Secret

See You Soon,
Hu Jintao

"Linux-based"?

[Empiric]

This brings to mind an idea relating to SCO's continuing absurdities in trying to own and/or destroy Linux.

With a major communist government becoming increasingly invested in Linux, everyone can be assured there will be at least one completely unassailable source of Linux distribution and development, like:

SCO: We'd like you to pay us, oh... [spins wheel-o-pricing] $1499 for each processor you're running Linux on...

People's Republic of China: Did we mention our extensive nuclear arsenal, deployable to Utah within an hour?

SCO: Oh... yes... nevermind.

Given this, maybe Linux users can play the same game of arbitrary definition that SCO has been playing. If worse comes to worse, one could just say, "Oh, Linux? We're not running Linux here. We're running a non-infringing, custom, Linux-based operating system. Feel free to prove otherwise." And with a perpetual source of FTP servers to obtain the "Linux-based operating system", SCO would have a truly daunting task of stopping it or charging their hoped-for extortion fees.

Screenshots here

[illtud]

Courtesy of Google (loads of hits on WPS Office):

http://www.pconline.com.cn/pcedu/soft/office/wps/1 0307/199035.html

Axis of evil

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that Billy-Boy gotta call George-Boy to get this axis of evil expanded a bit..

Ah memories

[segment]

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.

Re:Reinventing the wheel?

[Daniel Phillips]

But why are they writing their own, rather than taking the already very good OpenOffice.org, and working on that?

Perhaps because the office suite they're talking about has been around since 1988?

Any Competition to Microsoft Office is Good

[gellenburg]

Whether it be Star Office, Open Office, Word Perfect, ABI Word, Apple Works, etc.

At a time when a lot of US Companies are looking at China as a smorgesboard of potential opportunity as it slowly evolves from a Communistic to Capitalistic society, no doubt Microsoft has looked there as well.

Personally, I don't have a problem with China inventing their own CPU, or word processing software, but if they'd like to play nicely with others in this global economy, here's hoping that they at least stick to open and published standards.

In Beijing Linux is everywhere

[clueless123]

I happen to be in Beijing right now (just visiting). This week I've gone to a lot of shopping malls and computer stores looking arround, and I can say there is a *whole* lot of Linux out here. I Guess that M$softs antipiracy efforts here have backfired bigtime, now PHB's (at least in the corporate environment I am working at) are thinking twice before using pirated copies of MS. Considering that a copy of Windoze cost as much as 1/2 a months salary for a full-time programer, it is now very appealing to move to linux.

Phear my leet googling skillz...

[benjamindees]

Wikipedia Definition of WPS Office

Article about Kingsoft

Ironic

[Mark_MF-WN]

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"?

Microsoft Piracy and Linux

[synergy3000]

While Microsoft has been on an anti-piracy tirade for some time, I think they tolerated it in China. Why you ask? To allow for the entrenchment of their products. Once China became hooked and beholden to Microsoft products and as they became more integrated with the world economy, China would be pressured to enforce copyright laws because they want others to do the same. But of course we find China not wanting to become beholden to anyone. So what do they start doing? Making their own CPUs which will soon start selling worldwide (IMO). They also move towards linux as their operating system thus locking Microsoft (and the US) out of their computer loop. Any encryption needs are not crippled by the US government. China can home grow them. Software needs are the same. While India is outsourcing support, programming and more for other countries, China is also developing their highly educated middle class as well in all things computers. Will probably be a few years before they start realizing the value in making and selling software on the cheap to the rest of the world. In the end it may be globalization that really undoes Microsoft and smacks them down to a more modest company.

Re:reading comprehension: not a switch from MS Off

[Bushcat]

Kingsoft is a major player in China, and also known elsewhere in the world for its Chinese dictionary solutions. See dictionaries here and Kingsoft here.

Microsoft's perpetual problem in Asian markets is its inability to develop a character conversion system that people actually want to use. In Japanese, this is called Henkan and is the shim that converts typing on a QWERTY keyboard to Japanese (and, in the Chinese market, Chinese {traditional or Big-5]). MS has totally failed to come up with an acceptable system after years of effort, yet the local companies such as Just Systems (ATOK, et al) have no problem coming up with sophisticated predictive conversion systems whilst Microsoft blunders around with what it THINKS these markets need. MS will struggle in China because it is a US company attempting to place a Chinese veneer over its operations. Other US companies do vastly better operating overseas. Similarly, overseas companies do much better operating in the US (every Japanese company you can think of, for example).

As a sensible publishing solution, MS is handicapped by having project leaders that hav no idea what good Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese typography look like. They want a minimum-cost conversion of a US-centric package, that's what they pay for and that's what they get.

This isn't an anti-MS diatribe, it's more of a frustrated comment on how MS operates in the world. I happen to know that their internal double-byte-enabled translation tools are outstanding, for example, yet they simply don't trust the quality their translators deliver them using this tool. It's like having an agressively arrogant version of Teletubbies as clients.

Re:Chinese office

[Beowabbit]

Their system of language is based on ideograms where one ideogram represents a word or part of a word. It's the same with

• Korean
  Nope. Korean used to be written in Chinese characters, but now all writing in North Korea and almost all writing in South Korea is alphabetic. (Chinese characters are occasionally scattered into highbrow writing in South Korea, but it's still mostly alphabetic.) Korean writing arranges the letters into syllables in such a way that the syllables sort of look like Chinese characters, though -- quite pretty. (Link with examples)
• Japanese
  Japanese writing is a mix of phonetic and ideographic writing (with the ideograms borrowed from Chinese; they're called kanji, which is just Japanese-borrowed-from-Chinese for "Chinese characters").
• Mayan
  Unless there's recent news I've missed, Mayan hieroglyphs haven't been deciphered yet. (I guess people could still have an idea whether they're likely to be phonetic or likely to be ideographic based on the variety and distribution of symbols, though -- I don't know much about them.)
• Egyptian
  Egyptian is a fascinating mix of ideographic and phonetic writing. There are symbols that are used only for their sound, and symbols that are used only for their meaning, and lots of symbols that can be used rebus-like for either. I found a neat page about it at http://www.friesian.com/egypt.htm .

(The main point I wanted to make is that modern Korean isn't ideographic, and Japanese and Egyptian are only partly so.)

Re:I have to respond to this

[pmather]

These are the exact same tactics Hitler used to keep his people focused

Hitler developed an open source office suite?