We need to have an "Automatic Backup" feature. 

This is *not* the same as autosave.

Essentially you'd set an "Automatic Backup" interval like the autosave 
interval.  Call this interval x.

The system would then every x minutes automatically create a backup file in a 
temporary directory for each open file.  This backup file is essentially a 
saved copy of each document with a "temporary" filename such 
as "OOBackup01.sxc".   

If OpenOffice exits nicely (or the file is closed cleanly), it removes these 
backup files from disk.  If it (or the OS) crashes, it doesn't.

Then OpenOffice can be set up to check for these files on startup saying "A 
backup file exists, do you want to open it?" if one exists.

This basically buys you the functionality everyone wants with "AutoSave" but 
without the gotcha of accidentally overwriting files which shouldn't be 
overwritten.  That is, prevention of loss of work.  This is the way WordPerfect 
works, and is much better than the current OpenOffice implementation.

If you really want to get implementation-fancy, you could purge the file after 
a successfull save, and not start the timer ticking until the first 
modification to the file is done.