Plugging Away at ODF Plug-ins

According to this article, there are plenty of people beavering away on plug-ins for Microsoft Office to allow users to open and save files in the ODF format. But the interesting bit is this comment from Gary Edwards, one of the top people in the ODF world:

other developers, such as Gary Edwards, head of the OpenDocument Foundation, said he demonstrated his plug-ins to officials last week.

"They've been incredibly systematic, throwing hard stuff at us," he said, noting that his plug-in enables Microsoft Office to open a 16,000-row spreadsheet saved in the ODF format in 31 seconds. Opening the spreadsheet in Excel takes 43 seconds, he said.

Despite Microsoft's concerns that the rise of ODF could prove problematic for Office in the marketplace, Edwards said Microsoft was very helpful with his development efforts. Microsoft has "the best third-party developer model," he said. "They gave us what we needed, and it works beautifully."

Hm: I wonder what Microsoft are up to here? Could it be that they are resigned to ODF compatibility becoming a common requirement, and therefore accept the need to support it?