Merge pull request #469 from chef/ssd/contrib-docs

Add basic contribution documentation

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -1 +1,78 @@
 # Contributing to Chef Server
+
+Thank you for your interest in Chef Server!  We use **GitHub Issues**
+for issue tracking and contributions:
+
+1. Reporting an issue or making a feature request
+2. Submitting patches for new features or bug fixes
+
+## Submitting Patches
+
+All patches should be submitted as GitHub pull requests:
+
+1. Sign or be added to an existing
+[Contributor License Agreement (CLA)](https://supermarket.getchef.com/become-a-contributor).
+
+2. Create a GitHub Pull Request.
+
+3. If you are a Chef Software employee, submit an ad-hoc
+chef-server-12 build for your branch and post a link to in the pull
+request. For non Chef Software employees, your job will be submitted
+for you by one of the reviewers.
+
+4. Respond [Code Review](#cr) to code review comments to improve the
+code until it is ready to merge.
+
+5. Merge it! (If you don't have commit access, a maintainer will merge
+   it for you after code review is complete).
+
+## Reporting an Issue
+
+When reporting an issue, please try to include as much detail as
+possible, including:
+
+- The version of the Chef Server you are running,
+- The operating system you are running it on,
+- What you are trying to achieve but can't,
+- The steps to reproduce the issue you are seeing,
+- What you expect to see given the steps you've described, and
+- What you actually see given the steps you've described.
+
+## <a name="cr"></a> Code Review Process
+
+The Chef Code Review process happens on Github pull requests. See
+[this article](https://help.github.com/articles/using-pull-requests)
+if you're not familiar with Github Pull Requests.
+
+Once you a pull request, the **Chef Engineering Team** or **Chef Server
+Committers** will review your code and respond to you with any
+feedback they might have.
+
+The goal of code review is to work together to improve the quality of
+the code in the Chef Server code base. To get the most out of code
+review, please try to:
+
+1. When possible, keep pull requests small (200-400) lines of
+   changes. If a small change isn't possible, try to keep individual
+   commits small.
+
+2. Write informative commit messages during development. The best
+   commit messages will describe what changed at a high level and why
+   the change was made.
+
+3. Leave an initial pull request comment with any additional
+   information that you think might help reviewers but isn't
+   appropriate for commit messages.
+
+The process at this point is as follows:
+
+1. 2 thumbs-ups are required from the **Chef Engineering Team** or
+**Chef Server Committers** for all merges.
+
+2. When ready, your pull request will be tagged with label `Ready For
+   Merge`.
+
+3. Your patch will be merged into `master` including necessary
+  documentation updates and you will be included in
+  `CHANGELOG.md`. Our goal is to have patches merged in 2 weeks after
+  they are marked to be merged.