Symphony does not include the Base, Math, nor Draw modules. But we could all be using single-page non-tabbed browsers too. For regular everyday life stuff, the same tabbed interface helps with a budget spreadsheet in one tab and reference docs in others.
Also, each new tab eats less resources than a full new window. Just more intuitive than different windows. Chapter I'm writing is in one tab, other chapters for referbacks are in others, character notes and plot notes, dialog snippets in yet others. We geeks castigated IE for years until they adopted tabbed browsing how come we meekly accept non-tabbed office suite interfaces? I've got LibreOffice on my PCs, but I also have Symphony, and I have Symphony set as the default for all ODF formats and Microsoft Office formats that are supported by Symphony. I like the tabbed interface a whole lot better than having a bunch of windows running around. I strongly prefer Symphony for everyday use over LibreOffice/ (essentially indistinguishable until recently, from a user and UI perspective). Also reported right here on Slashdot, which is of course why nobody here seems to know that.
If they didn't then, they did 4 months ago, when IBM donated the entire Symphony codebase and rights to Apache. IBM added some import/export filter improvements, which I think they gave back to the community. Other than the IBM-built UI, a lot of Symphony is open source or built on open source. Now I believe 3.3 or at least 3.2 after the early-2011 Symphony FixPack. IBM Lotus Symphony is now based on OO.o 3x code, has been since 2009. It has to diverge FIRST and then, if that divergence produces something interesting, it will survive because it is doing something interesting. Just doing the same things Libre Office already does better isn't a reason to maintain it. To do that, of course, Open Office has to actually do something new.
The right approach is to find a niche in which Open Office and not Libre Office or any other office software is the correct solution. Saying "Open Office can't be allowed to die" is simply not the right approach. Libre Office is thriving in most of the environments Open Office used to do well in, with KOffice, Abiword and other integrated office packages doing well in their own niches. ("Survival of the fittest" is a misnomer as it carries the implication that there is a unique fittest and a unique environment for it to be fittest in.) Branches compete and, in those environments in which a given branch thrives, that branch will continue to evolve. The point of Open Source is that it is an evolutionary-based philosophy.