OpenXML approved and Office to support ODF

[MielieSpoor]

I am very supprised that this went by unnoticed!

The 2007 Microsoft Office system already provides support for 20 different document formats within Microsoft Office Word, Office Excel and Office PowerPoint. With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) scheduled for the first half of 2009, the list will grow to include support for XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1.

Open XML Overwhelmingly Approved as an ISO / IEC standard (IS 29500): the end of the file formats war

There is a lot more info on the Blog of Brian Jones pertaining to what Microsoft will be involved in and what the will support, but in short... you will be able to open ODF documents in Office, edit them and saves as a ODF document. Microsoft will help in the development of ODF and then obviously they will continue on the development of OpenXML.