Contributing
Contributing to OpenJDK can take many forms. Writing code and providing patches is just one of them. A big part of developing a feature or a bugfix is testing and code review. Anything you can do to help out in these areas will be recognized as a contribution. Join the mailing lists to engage in design discussions and reviews, and download the latest EA builds or Project repositories to try out new features and give feedback. If you see some misbehavior, or if you see somebody mention some misbehavior on some internet forum, try to track it down. Good bug reports with reproducible test cases are extremely valuable and make excellent contributions.
Anything you can do to spread the word about Java, new features, and your experiences using the JDK will be helpful for the community and to the OpenJDK developers. Trying out a new feature and reporting your experiences is also a contribution. Whether you find that the new feature improves your application, or if you find some area that needs to be improved, your feedback is valuable to the developers of that feature.
If you have a success story where Java solved your problem, or if you successfully upgraded to a more recent version of the JDK and noticed some improvements, spreading this story through a blog, news article, or some other channel is also a contribution.
If you’re in a position to choose what programming language to use in a project, in a tutorial, or in a class, you have the power to enlarge the Java community in a very direct way, and your colleagues or students will get an opportunity to learn one of the most used programming languages in the world.