Chinese Government to Use Only Local Software

owlmon writes "CNET Asia is reporting that China has outlawed foreign software in government applications. I expect that software buyers outside of the government will have to follow this lead. It's the same "network effect" that has powered Microsoft's growth for years. When the entire Chinese government is using WPS Office, anyone doing business with the government will feel mighty encouraged to follow suit. Otherwise, how will they exchange documents?"

Comments

Re:Conversion Filter?

[1010011010]

do you know what saves MS Word documents even better? MS Word.

Actually, this isn't true. I regularly recover MS Word 2000 documents using OpenOffice. Word creates files it later cannot read back in on a fairly regular basis, and OpenOffice seems to be able to read them, even when Word can't.

1. Create document in MS-Word
2. Save document
3. Try to re-open document. Word crashes, refuses to read it, or similar
4. Open document with Openoffice Writer
5. Remove corrupted text (thanks, Word!)
6. Save back to Word format
7. User can continue using Word if he chooses, with this file again

OpenOffice has a better Word Import Filter than MS-Word does. As an added bonus, opening a Word or Excel document in OpenOffice and saving it in OO format -- without changing anything -- results in a smaller file that is also standards-based. Plus, one can export to PDF directly. Practical experience has shown my office staff that OpenOffice produces PDFs more reliably than MS-Office+Acrobat.