Contribute to an open source software project

I created a six-line del.icio.us userscript and released it to the world of open source. How’s that for a cheer-worthy goal!!!

Well, I did contribute to a project, but not really too much. Sajax (http://www.modernmethod.com/sajax/) “is an open source tool to make programming websites using the Ajax framework — also known as XMLHTTPRequest or remote scripting — as easy as possible”. I performed a “dumb translation” from the Ruby code to a javascript/ASP version.

Unfortunately, I submitted my code - for review - to the ‘owner’ of the project and he accidentally posted it, along with news that it was available. That would have been fine, except that the code - while working - was in a very rough form and was certainly no better than beta. So now my name is attached to rough, less than brilliant, blind port of Ruby code.

But it works. So, I am considering this a step in the right direction.

Update:

Well, the worst that could happen did. So, the untested, beta code I gave to the Sajax committer to review - not to release - was released. And it was buggy. And it exposed some dangerous security flaws (now I remember why eval is considered icky in javascript, even if it isn’t frowned so much upon in Ruby. I even briefly discussed it with the committer. Oops!).