UOF Vies to Be a Third Contender in ODF–OOXML Battle

Andy Updegrove writes "Long-time followers of the ODF-OOXML story will recall that there is a third editable, XML-based document format in the race to create the documentary record of history. That contender is called UOF, for Uniform Office Format, and it has been under development in China since 2002. Last summer, UOF was adopted as a Chinese National Standard, and on Friday the first complete office suite based upon UOF was released. It's called Evermore Integrated Office 2009 (EIOffice 2009 for short). How successful could this new entrant be in China? For starters, Evermore Software Co. Ltd., its developer, is reportedly the largest software vendor to the Chinese government. And then there's price: Evermore's professional edition is less than a quarter of the price of the comparable version of Office 2007. And finally, it's clearly no coincidence that on July 11, Evermore Vice President Cao Shen called for Microsoft to be the first target for China's new anti-monopoly law, which will take effect in just ten days' time. Whether Shen is speaking to, or for, the government remains to be seen."

Comments

Re:"speaking for the Chinese government"

[Hal_Porter]

It's good to see that Americans are skeptical about the government. But claiming it is as bad as China misses some important points

1) There are no elections in China. A single party has been in power since the revolution
2) That party has now embraced the benefits of capitalism
3) Business in China is very dominated by personal contacts or guanxi. Chinese people have told me that most companies hire a few party/army types as non working directors for protection
4) Individuals in China have in practice few if any rights. They can be locked up, tortured or killed for criticizing the government without any process. The party maintains a tight control of the judiciary in any case. Prisoners can be forced to work. A Japanese friend told me a Chinese company bid for an OECD contract to run a hospital in Africa using Chinese prison labour.
5) Executed prisoners organs have been used for transplant. In an environment where health care is very expensive to the average person, there is no independent judiciary and business and government are inseparable this is equivalent to your boss killing you and selling the organs. Americans joke about this, but in China it has actually happened and no one will joke about it because they are scared.

Now I don't have much experience of the US. But it seems highly unlikely to me given that it is a democracy with an independent judiciary that it is as bad as China. That's not to say it is perfect of course, ambitious politicians and business people will try to corrupt any system. But it seems likely that they are more contained by the US system than the Chinese one.