Microsoft has announced that Office 2007 is to support ODF, albeit not until 2009.
Which is interesting. Still doesn't solve the problem of backwards compatibility and mixed environments with Office 2003 and 2007, but at least doing ODF is a step forward.
However the cycnical me wonders if this is a ploy by Microsoft to head off being beat up by the EU about anti competitive practices. Like announce a statement of direction, talk the talk and hope that as most people upgrade pc's every three or four years that they would have built a critical mass of docx users so that they can then claim that ODF is a very minority religion.
Certainly our uni experience has been that while corporately we're still 2003 and .doc, students who have taken up the it's not cheating $75 deal have forced us to deploy the compatibility pack due to the number of .docx documents being emailed in as submissions.
Of course what's really interesting is that Open Office is even cheaper as in free, yet students won't jump for it. Crap marketing, crap distribution or what?
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See this Reuters report for more detail including initial reaction from the European Commission
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