Open source software is all about collaboration and I use it nearly every day. Unfortunately, it’s been one-way relationship until very recently.

I was working with a great open source framework for encryption, called Jasypt. It stands for JAva Simplified encrYPTion and I recommend it for any encryption needs you may have. One of the killer features is the ability to encrypt property files and plug right into Spring’s ServletContextPropertyPlaceholderConfigurer. Unfortunately I found a bug in this feature and reported it here. Shortly thereafter, the change was released to the public in version 1.7.1 and my small patch was helping people using this software.

In order for open source software to be successful, it’s really critical that people contribute and, really, anyone can do it. Giving back to the open source community should be on top of all of our to-do lists.