Looks like they've taken the politics and skills systems from EVE (the skill advancement system is very very similar), removed the combat and further upped the scope for politics.
They deserve credit for trying something different and I hope it's successful for them, but might be hard to attract a subscriber base with such an open-ended game concept and no combat. EVE already confuses people because it's so open-ended, but you can at least play that game like a giant version of Elite with real people as the pirates if you don't want to get too heavily involved with all the player corporations (guilds) and politics.
Seed could be very good for true roleplayers who want to get embroiled in all that politicking, planning and plotting without all the 'kiddy gankers' getting in the way.
However, while they might say there's no combat or PvP, it's sort of there by proxy in that politics = social PvP. They might encourage players to work together, but you can be sure there'll be plenty of friction injected to spice things up.
Sounds a bit too much like "Sims In Space" or "Real Life in Space" for my tastes. I don't deal very well with politics and popularity contests IRL or online (which is why guilds tend to do my head in).
Let us know how it plays though.