The Document Foundation argues that people should use the Open Document Format instead of OOXML that is controlled by a single company.
The Document Foundation argues that people should use the Open Document Format instead of OOXML that is controlled by a single company.
I suspect that last paragraph is most of the reason they chose the default they did. They are already going to get a bunch of pushback on the change, and the closer to a 1 to 1 swap it is, the less pushback there will be.
The other point is, the more likely it is to just play nice with files coming out of MS Office, the less they’ll need to waste time and IT resources troubleshooting things, even if the fix is literally clicking ok on a dialog box.