The thing here is that the LO codebase is huge and they don't have enough devs to maintain it.
So they deal with this by (1) turning all the automated code quality tools they can on it (2) getting top-notch open source devs to fix the problems the tools turn up.
Result: a more stable application for the users - remember that most of LO's users are nontechnical people relying on it for real work - and a more maintainable code base for the devs.
The reason this is important is that huge important smelly codebases with too few devs will increasingly be the norm in the future, and LO is developing important tools of attack.
The issue, I feel, is with VCL. However, there has been an incredible amount of refactoring - for instance, they have done some awesome things around Lifecycle management [1] and idle tuners have been improved put of sight.
So they deal with this by (1) turning all the automated code quality tools they can on it (2) getting top-notch open source devs to fix the problems the tools turn up.
Result: a more stable application for the users - remember that most of LO's users are nontechnical people relying on it for real work - and a more maintainable code base for the devs.
The reason this is important is that huge important smelly codebases with too few devs will increasingly be the norm in the future, and LO is developing important tools of attack.