Please lurk a little bit before starting if you go this route. I started by hanging out in the support and development irc channels to learn the common problems

Please lurk a little bit before starting if you go this route. I started by hanging out in the support and development irc channels to learn the common problems people had. This gave me a good idea where to jump in. I got very lucky to get involved with some very nice people who were willing to play along and review my code. Distributed version control systems tend to make this even easier. ( We were stuck with CVS) PS: don't make them teach you how to use the version control system :)