What an amazing conversation. It's true that ODF was NOT designed to be compatible with MSOffice and the legacy binary format. That's not to say there were not considerable efforts within the OASIS Open Office XML TC (ODF) pushing for compatibility. But Sun successfully held off these efforts, insisting that ODF was not designed to be compatible with MSOffice or the MSOffice binaries.
Many asked the obvious question, "How are end users supposed to convert their information (billions of legacy "in-process" binary documents) to ODF if ODF is not designed for that conversion?" Stellent, represented by Phil Boutros, and Corel, represented by Paul Langille and Tom Magliery, were particularly obsessed with this problem. Without "compatibility", how were end users supposed to convert their documents?
Needless to say, Sun prevailed. ODF is 100% perfectly compatible with OpenOffice/StarOffice, by design. It is not compatible with the billions of "in-process" compound business documents essential to world trade, commerce and information exchange.
What a shame,
~ge~
What is noteworthy about this investment is that we’re working closely with members of JTC 1 SC 34 ( the standards body responsible with Open XML maintenance ) to identify and resolve backward compatibility issues related to this new functionality.