As was discussed in tonight’s Mac Port Meeting for OpenOffice.org, the Mac Porting Team will be dropping support for Mac OS X 10.3.x after the release of OpenOffice.org 2.1.
The reasons for the dropping of support of Mac OS X 10.3 include:

• Around the time OpenOffice.org 2.2 is due out, Mac OS X 10.5 will be released some time in “Spring 2007″[1]. Trying to support 3 Major versions of Mac OS X is difficult with our small team.
• The current Aqua development versions of OpenOffice.org require the use of Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
• The Mac Porting Team has limited resources and very few developers currently have access to a machine that has Mac OS X 10.3 on it. This means that developing and testing on Mac OS X 10.3 is difficult.
• [Only for the technical minded] The compiler (gcc3) that is used for producing builds for Mac OS X 10.3 isn’t good enough any more. Examples for problems include: It claims valid code isn’t valid; doesn’t give useful error or warning messages; and some warning messages are not available. The gcc4 (the compiler in Mac OS X 10.4), is much better as it doesn’t have the aforementioned problems.

If it is shown that there is a large requirement for continuing future support for Mac OS X 10.3, then this decision may be reversed.
The log of the meeting is available to read.

[1]: Source Mac OS X Leopard Sneak Peek Page