I’ve been working on Mozilla’s Tracemonkey source code for quite awhile now as part of my research. The basic goal is to apply a labeling mechanism to JavaScript objects that will help in tracking information flow. Along the way though, you notice things about the code: some area’s look like they need cleaning, or could be rewritten more clearly. During development of my project, I once wrote some really crappy code, that in certain cases, would allocate unlimited amounts of memory. When I ran the new test driver, some of these cases were uncovered and ground my system to a halt. I decided that I would take a detour and fix the test driver, in case I ever write such code again. Two days after reporting the error, and 1 day after providing the fix, I’ve made a contribution! It’s not very much, but it does mark my first contribution to a pretty cool product.