XStream is nothing without contributions from the user community. There are many ways to contribute. We are constantly working on the software and documentation, so it's a good idea to contact the team. For question about usage or possible misbehavior, please contact us on the mailing list. This is also the place to discuss further development of XStream.
The correct place if you are looking for help is the mailing list. You get there a much wider audience from other users and also the developers are reading and answering there your questions.
One of the traditional weak points of open source software is the documentation. Any help with this aspect of the project will be welcomed with open arms, or at the very least with open email clients!
We are working on one or two examples of using XStream, but we can always do with more.
We eat our own dogfood, but we're also happy to feed other people's dogs (if you'll excuse a stretched dachshund metaphor!). If you want to request a new feature you can either make a request through the issue tracker or by sending a message to the mailing list. The benefit of any new features will be discussed on the mailing list, so its a good idea to sign up so that you can stick your oar in.
You can report bugs through the issue tracker interface or in case you are in doubt whether it is really a bug or just a wrong usage, you may ask first posting to the mailing list. Additional brownie points are awarded for bug reports that include a failing unit test.
If you want lots of brownie points, send a fix along with your bug report and failing unit test. Bug fixes are best sent as patches that we can apply to the codebase. Remember to tell us which version the patch should be applied against, or we'll get very confused. To be accepted into the codebase, patches must be released under the same license as XStream itself.
If you have a new feature request, then we'll listen extra hard if you show us how it works. A new feature might be best implemented as a patch to an existing class or as a new class. The XStream API contains many extension points that allow new functionality to be integrated into the framework. We are rather anal about testing, so if you send us some code without any tests we will probably ask you to write the tests tests as well before we add it to the codebase.
If you have a project that builds upon XStream we will be happy to announce your project on the XStream site.
We follow the former Codehaus manifesto when it comes to expanding the core team.