Here's what Chris Lilley had to say, reconstructed from my notes (in other words, this is not a direct quote):
So we were in a meeting when these articles about the Foundation and CDF started to appear, and we were really puzzled. CDF isn't anything like ODF at all – it's an "interoperability agreement," mainly focused on two other specifications - XHTML and SVG. You'd need to use another W3C specification, called Web Interactive Compound Document (WICD, pronounced "wicked"), for exporting, and even then you could only view, and not edit the output.
The one thing I'd really want your readers to know is that CDF (even together with WICD) was not created to be, and isn't suitable for use, as an office format.
Here are some other takeaways from my conversation with Chris:
Although they would be welcome to become members, Neither Gary, Sam nor Marbux are members of W3C or the CDF working group
The W3C has never been contacted by anyone from the Foundation about CDF. After the articles began appearing, the W3C sent an inquiry to the Foundation, and received only a general reply in response
The CDF working group was not chartered to achieve conversion between formats
Although he hasn't spent a lot of time trying to unravel what Gary has written on the subject, he can't make any sense out of why the Foundation thinks that CDF makes sense as a substitute for ODF