OpenOffice.org 3.3 Beta Release Available

I support OpenOffice by recommending it to people who don't have needs such as mine, and by using it on my home computer for basic word processing tasks. I also registered my support for the option in the related bug thread. An important part of a project are people who use the type of software regularly for relatively important tasks that can give suggestions about the potential direction of a project. That so far has been my role. If I didn't care about Open Office at all I would just ignore it.

Should I do more? Should I code the solution myself? If I can't, should I donate to a project without any guarentee of the feature getting added? That's money I could donate to other projects that do fulfill my needs and time spent coding on projects that more in sync with my skillset. Ultimately it is about incentives. I think I have provided a level of support matching the return I currently get out of the project. Asking me to invest further (time, money, code) would require me to feel that I would be getting something out of it, because ultimately I have only finite resources and their are infinite projects to donate to and spend my time on. If a project doesn't encourage my support by working towards satisfying my needs in some way, then how it's only natural for me to choose competitor products (be they opensource or proprietary).

Also, please note that this isn't a criticism for not adding the feature. The bug request for this is 8 years old now, so clearly the project has decided it's not worth doing or would rather do a complete/elegant solution that takes more time. What I was replying to was the assertion that certain features can't be reasonably NEEDED by users of the software in any clear, quantifiable sense.