hello, im a new contributor

[Philipp Kunz]

Hello everyone

I have been developing with Java for around 17 years now and when I 
encountered some bug I decided to attempt to fix it: 
https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-6695402. This also looks like 
it may not be too big a piece for a first contribution.

I read through quite some guides and all kinds of documents but could 
not yet help myself with the following questions:

May I login to jira to add comments to bugs? If so, how would I request 
or receive credentials? Or are mailing lists preferred?

Another question is whether I should apply it to jdk9, but it may be too 
late now, or to jdk10, and backporting can be considered later. Probably 
it wouldn't even make much a difference for the patch itself.

One more question I have is how or where to find the sources from before 
migration to mercurial. Because some lines of code I intend to change go 
back farther and in the history I find only 'initial commit'. With such 
a history I might be able better to understand why it's there and 
prevent to make the same mistake again.

I guess the appropriate mailing list for above mentioned bug is 
security-dev. Is it correct that I can send a patch there and just hope 
for some sponsor to pick it up? Of course I'd be glad if some sponsor 
would contact me and maybe provide some assistance or if someone would 
confirm that sending a patch to the mailing list is the right way to 
find a sponsor.

Philipp Kunz