HornetQ is a community project and we  encourage development contributions.

If you are interested in getting involved in the development of HornetQ then we would love you to get in touch with us

Here's how this normally happens:

1. Perhaps you are a user of HornetQ and want to take that extra step and contribute to development.
2. Chat to us on IRC channel, send us an email or drop a note on the forums saying you're interested in contributing.
3. We'll give you an initial task to do from JIRA - probably something relatively small and simple at first
4. You complete the task - if it's ok we will apply it to the trunk
5. Perhaps we repeat steps 3 and 4 a few times.
6. You sign a Red Hat committer agreement - this is available here.
7. If your committer agreement is approved, then you get commit rights to SVN. You now have the kudos of being a committer for a high profile messaging project. This looks great on your resume!
8. Before touching your favorite IDE, take a look at the Getting started as a new committer.