a note from a latecomer to the discussion
It's worth noting that OpenXML may be a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. It's not just "politics" that makes open source and open standards advocates angst over Microsoft's standards proposal. There's also the simple fact that the proposed "standard" is so poorly specified that adhering to the standard in no way guarantees -- or even greatly increases the likelihood of -- compatibility between office suites.
Damned if you do: If OpenOffice.org developers choose to support OpenXML (which I'm sure it will, once the developers get around to navigating through the spaghetti in the standard specification), it will have similar compatibility problems to the problems it currently has with Microsoft's binary DOC format. Unfortunately, because OpenXML will be a "standard" now (one assumes Microsoft ultimately won't lose that battle), most people will think that the OpenOffice.org developers have no excuse for failing to achieve interoperability with MS Office, and will chalk the failure up to open source development incompetence, even though nothing could be farther from the truth of the matter. This is, of course, probably exactly what Microsoft wants.
Damned if you don't: I think your attitude pretty much sums up how OpenOffice.org and the open source world in general will be regarded if OO.o doesn't provide support for OpenXML formats.
