Subject: bug#19299: 25.0.50; "Contributing" button in *About GNU Emacs* no longer works

From: Glenn Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 16:45:28 -0500

PS perhaps there is some confusion as to the purpose of this file.

The intended audience for etc/CONTRIBUTE is people who are not Emacs
developers and do not have write access to the repo. So it
specifically does not talk about how to commit things to Savannah, etc.
(People may have added bits of such information to the file in error.)
Many people just want to send a patch, not get write access.
That was why CONTRIBUTE needs to be in the installed Emacs.

"What people who commit to Emacs need to know" is a much more lengthy
document, and IMO should be a separate one. (IIRC, Xue Fuqiao wrote a
version of it the last time this came up; see emacs-devel archives.
I have to say that I didn't like that version much.)

Such a document is obviously long overdue.