Novell to Write OpenOffice code for Microsoft's Format.

I was asking about Microsoft Office 2007 backward compatibility today, only because OpenOffice doesn't support Microsoft Office Open XML - yet. It ends up that Novell is capitalizing on their recent deal with Microsoft:

WALTHAM, Mass., Dec. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Novell today announced that the Novell® edition of the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite will now support the Office Open XML format, increasing interoperability between OpenOffice.org and the next generation of Microsoft Office. Novell is cooperating with Microsoft and others on a project to create bi-directional open source translators for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office, with the word processing translator to be available first, by the end of January 2007. The translators will be made available as plug-ins to Novell's OpenOffice.org product. Novell will release the code to integrate the Open XML format into its product as open source and submit it for inclusion in the OpenOffice.org project. As a result, end users will be able to more easily share files between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org, as documents will better maintain consistent formats, formulas and style templates across the two office productivity suites...

And from 'Novell OpenOffice to Support Microsoft Office Open XML':

..."OpenOffice.org is very important to Novell," added Friedman, "and as our customers deploy Linux desktops across their organizations, they're telling us that sharing documents between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office is a must-have." Microsoft's business division vice president Chris Caposella this morning acknowledged Novell's contribution to (Office) Open XML.

Suddenly the landscape looks very different, as by the end of this week, the world's most widely distributed and supported document format will at last be an open standard...but it won't be ODF...

The way I see it, Novell is just doing good business - but supporting Microsoft's format on everyone isn't something I really appreciate in that Microsoft could have incorporated ODF in Microsoft Office 2007, and chose not to. If Microsoft really wanted interoperability, wouldn't they have conformed to a pre-existing document format that would not have cost them anything in royalties to support?

And then, I have to still wonder - will this help apparent backward compatilbility issues within Microsoft Office?

If someone wants to impress me, get Microsoft to support ODF.