In addition, Edwards formerly was OpenOffice.org's technical liaison to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, which oversees the OpenDocument specifications. But his pedigree hasn't made him immune to criticism by OpenOffice advocates over the plug-in work.

"I understand that Massachusetts is under the gun to migrate and that this might make it easier to fulfill their mandate," said Louis Suarez-Potts, who works at CollabNet Inc. and manages OpenOffice.org's community council. But, he added, "I see anything that extends the life of Microsoft Office as problematic."

Edwards conceded that slowing the adoption of OpenOffice by users could be a side effect of plug-ins such as the one he's developing. "Yes, I want to see OpenOffice on every desktop," he said. "But I think in many ways, we are extending the usefulness of Microsoft Office."

Partly as a concession to his open-source critics, Edwards said he currently isn't working to make his plug-in function with Office 2007. But he acknowledged that if Massachusetts were interested enough in Office 2007 compatibility to pay for it, he would be hard-pressed to refuse to build it.

There are other alternatives besides Edwards' plug-in. For example, a New Zealand-based open-source project has developed free software that's designed to convert Word files into OpenDocument. According to the project's Web site, the software, called DocVert, "generally" works, though "some embedded objects within MS-Word may not convert successfully." However, DocVert isn't embedded into Word; it is run separately.