[BuildStream] Contribution Guidelines, Status of nosoftware subgroup

[Chandan Singh <chandan chandansingh net>]

Hi,

I was looking at our contributing guide to add some specifics on issue
reporting, which is when I realized that our contributing docs
(https://docs.buildstream.build/master/CONTRIBUTING.html#filing-issues)
refer to a policy guide in a separate "nosoftware/alignment" repository
(https://gitlab.com/BuildStream/nosoftware/alignment/-/blob/master/BuildStream_policies.md).

I personally found this rather odd and I don't see why these instructions need
to live in a separate repository. In fact, I was thinking about making this
section more prominent, and move out of the Contributing section to the
top-level index. But, that's a separate concern.

The information in the nosoftware/alignment repository is certainly out of date
now given that it hasn't been updated in over an year. In my opinion, we should
some of this content to the main contributing guide, perhaps in a more condensed
form. The current guide seems very process oriented and focuses too much on
labels, assignees, statuses etc. I think we can simplify most of this since we
should aim to keep the barrier to entry for contribution low. How do folks feel
about this?

---

This specific question aside, I am also curious about the nosoftware subgroup
(https://gitlab.com/BuildStream/nosoftware) in general. Since none of the
repositories there have been updated in quite a while, I wanted to ask if
anyone is maintaining it currently?

If so, I think we need to document what each repository is supposed to do. At
present, they seem to have a weird combination of pdf reports, status updates,
shell scripts and weirdly enough our beloved BuildStream Beaver.

If not, we should probably move some of the content to the main repository or
the website, and archive the rest.

Let me know.

Cheers!
Chandan