Not sure how many contributors prefer to help Microsoft over Sun. If Microsoft wants to fund a fork, let them, though they'll need to pay a little more of that monopoly money if they want better results (naturally, they'd prefer free volunteer help).
The majority of the contributions of the Openoffice forks most people use come from Sun, and Sun does benefit a little more because of that. Apparently they aren't doing too bad of a job since so many groups are using so much code that comes from Sun (and from the rest of the Sun backed OO.o community).
I really believe in forks. When you change code, and it doesn't go back into the "tree" from where you got it, it is a fork (see wikipedia). Groups fork all the time (minor forks or even private forks, especially easy to do with software like git). In the case of Openoffice, I would prefer that people use the ideas Microsoft is partly funding through Meeks instead of the actual code. Meeks is in a good financial position would be my guess. Another guess is that eventually OO.o (KDEOffice, etc) will get around to including the best ideas from the removed go-ooo hacks.
Microsoft really needs the FOSS crowd to adopt their API. They'll always try and poison any API out there (Java, ODF, Linux, OO bindings and internals, etc), but they have huge investments and control over dotnet, OOXML, etc, which is what they want everyone to use. While Sun has settled with Microsoft (and had the upper hand), Novell is still much in debt to them. Today, Novell is *way* too focused on contributions that help Microsoft. That's what happens when so much of your revenues come from a single source.
Sun is no angel, but in this particular battle of "evil" corporations (Sun vs Novell rivalry), they are the one offering checks on the biggest threat to FOSS by far (on Monopolysoft), and they aren't doing too bad of a job with OO.o, either. Keep perspective, people. Let MicroScrooge spend real monopoly money. Give free help to other Office suites if not to OO.o (if you want to contribute to such software/community). If you don't like Java, OO.o, Sun, etc, there are alternatives less influenced by Monopolysoft than what Novell produces.
Imagine Microsoft losing their huge leverage and huge MSOffice market! Free OO.o is a real threat. Neutralize it? Allow Microsoft to leverage it? Not a chance. Avoid Monopolysoft's embrace and extensions. Petition Novell to dump their "partner". They should be competing against Microsoft and not with them. Novell can play the same game Sun is playing by opening up Netware and beefing up their services. [One of evil Sun's saving graces is OO.o and Java to the extent these really do help free Linux/FOSS and/or dent Monopolysoft's levers and revenues.]
