I use spark a lot and love it. I also love OpenFire. It seems that OpenFire gets all the love from the current devs (and for good reason, I don't know of many other XMPP servers that are as good as OpenFire -- Good work guys!).
What needs to be done to move Spark forward? It hasn't had a new build/version since 2011... It's still packaged with java6, and there are things that should get fixed with it.
I'm able to help out with the project (Java development), but don't know where to start or who to talk to?
A little about me - I'm a Systems Admin by trade but also do a lot of Java development - I'm self taught and have been doing Java for about a year now. I'm currently taking courses that cover java as part of my degree. I'd love to get into an Open Source project and help out. I do work full time and go to school full time, so I can't dedicate a ton of time to the project, but I'll do what I can.
The company I work for runs OpenFire and Spark at the office and I ran an OpenFire server from home until some recent ISP issues... so I'm pretty familiar with the "user end" of these projects.
Thanks!