"For OpenOffice.org (OOo), MS Office (MSO) is the elephant in the living room. As much as the project might want to ignore MSO, it cannot. Many potential users never have used anything except MSO, and most have to share files with MSO users at some point. The lucky exceptions, of course, are those in a free software work or educational environment, who deal only with equally lucky family members and friends.
"For these reasons, OpenOffice.org includes design elements and features to making interacting with MS Office and switching from it as easy as possible..."