A non-OM solution through the use of the MA-1/Kendai OM adaptor is a product called the Multi Focus System from Zork; a most interesting & innovative company. The product is rather expensive and makes use of an APO coated enlarger lens for imaging, so you can't choose your favourite manual lens.
There's no necessity to use an APO enlarging lens, though, just as in the case with normal taking lenses, you'd expect APO lenses to have generally better performance. Most decent enlarging lenses will do fine on the Zoerk Multifocus System. I speak from experience, owning two and a raft of enlarging lenses, one APO and the rest not.
I think one of the great features of an open-mount standard is the ability to mix & match interesting (hopefully useful) third party equipment through the use of adaptors (limited in function as they may be). Well, the E-system lens system is still in its infancy relative to the N&Cs. I too look foward to innovative lenses from Oly, but I guess it's high speed primes, zooms & macros to expect for 2005.
What feature? The so-called 'open-mount standard' (which I take you're referring to the 4/3 system mount standard) is essentially to AVOID inconsistencies/problems in cross-brand operation for lenses with the same 4/3 mount by standardizing key design and engineering parameters. 'Lens-hacking' wasn't what the engineers who came up with the 4/3 system had in mind ;-)
BTW, some might say that the most favorable 35mm SLR mount for the die-hard lens hacker is the EOS mount which seems to accept almost any other lenses (but not all) via various adapters due to the (fortunately) more favorable flange to imager distance used in the EF system. But yes, the 4/3 mount is not half bad for this type of thing.
Well improvements in SW may offer new opportunities. Eg Olympus Studio SW takes EXIF info from the ZD wide-angle lens' built-in chip & applies optical distortion corrections to the corner-to-corner sharp image. That is a step in the right direction already 
That's just erroneous. If the corners are not sharp in the first place, the Studio software cannot make it sharp as if by magic. The maxim is:
If it's not there, it's not there.
What Studio can do is to correct for light falloff (often called vignetting or corner darkening) and geometric distortion. This is not unique to Olympus. Nikon's software can do the same for some of their lenses as well, but Studio is able to do this for all ZD lenses.
