Is there anyone making money from this project? Like a company is selling support contracts for it, or straight up selling it as is? Besides that, I can't imagine what could compel someone to work on this. If Oracle has a full time engineer on it, that just seems like a waste of money for Oracle, and a miserable time for whoever is stuck with the job. There just has to be some malice, or ulterior motives involved in keeping this project alive, if it's not making money and it's not attracting developers.
Even if you believe this has a redeeming quality or two over Libre Office, it would still be a better investment to send a PR to LO, or just suck it up and live with whatever gripes you have while you use the vastly superior product.