OpenOffice is for users rather than developers

- it's too large to understand and it doesn't seem to be sufficiently modular for volunteers to get hang of before they lose interest
- it's "boring" because it's mature and pretty much feature-complete
- it's too mature and to coherent; you have to break an awful lot of things just to change something small

This is indeed the sort of software that individual volunteers can't contribute a lot to. But then I don't miss them either.

I like Open Office. A lot. It just works and it helps me to get my writing and spreadsheets and presentations done with minimum fuss. It allows me to interact with MS-Office users. I use it instead of having a license for MS Office, and I think that 95% of Office users can do the same. Its nearest competitor, KOffice, is something I don't even need to hear about. Simply because I have Open Office. Perhps some day, when KOffice matches Open Office in features, I'll be inclined to compare the two. But not now.

As long as it's available for free I'll be happy to use it. It's an (extreme) example of an OS project where "free as in beer" is just more important than "free as in speech".