It would put me off too if they were advocating for replacing OpenDocument, but from the article:
> Finally, let us reiterate that this essay is a thought experiment. The OpenDocument format is well-established and already well-designed. Nobody really believes that OpenDocument should be changed to use SQLite as its container instead of ZIP. Nor is this article a criticism of OpenDocument for not choosing SQLite as its container since OpenDocument predates SQLite. Rather, the point of this article is to use OpenDocument as a concrete example of how SQLite can be used to build better application file formats for future projects.