I wouldn't be at all surprised if eventually OO becomes somewhat "skinnable"
so that you just select in the preferences whether you want a ribbon
interface, the traditional menu bar, or even something completely different
like the old Amiga or Mac style menus.
Yeah, it's definitely a bit of an "odd man out," although given how
common it is to simply e-mail Word/Excel files, perform mail merges based on
your contacts list, etc., I'm not surprised at the success Microsoft has had
at bundling Outlook into Office either. In the past few years they've been
trying to extend this "integration" to the web as well with Sharepoint...
although that effort seems to be meeting with mixed successes.