Jonas Gamalielsson and Björn Lundell, of the University of Skövde in Sweden, have extensively studied the LibreOffice project. They have published two different papers in 2012 and 2014, which represent a very interesting reading.
Gamalielsson J. – Lundell B., Long-Term Sustainability of Open Source Software Communities beyond a Fork: A Case Study of LibreOffice, in: Hammouda I. – Lundell B. – Mikkonen T. – Scacchi W., (EDS) Open Source Systems: Long-Term Sustainability. OSS 2012. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, Vol. 378, Pages 29-47, 2012, Springer, Berlin – Heidelberg
Gamalielsson J., Lundell B., Sustainability of Open Source software communities beyond a fork: How and why has the LibreOffice project evolved?, in: Journal of Systems and Software, Vol. 89, Pages 128-145, 2014, Elsevier, Amsterdam