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CONTRIBUTING: Lead off with the security section #57

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@wking wking commented Apr 11, 2018

This reduces the chances that a skimmer reads “Issues are used for bugs…” and files an issue without scrolling down to see the security section.

I've also added links back to the security section from the all other paragraphs that suggest using other channels (issues, pull requests, IRC, …), so that no matter which anchor a skimmer starts at, they cannot miss the fact that we have a special disclosure procedure for security issues. If we are confident that readers interested in submitting a security issue will not start at a mid-document anchor without reading the beginning of this file, we could drop some or all of these back-refs.

Also adjust the lines I touch to use one line per sentence, since that's the standard in other OCI Projects (like the runtime spec).

This reduces the chances that a skimmer reads "Issues are used for
bugs..." and files an issue without scrolling down to see the security
section.

I've also added links back to the security section from the all other
paragraphs that suggest using other channels (issues, pull requests,
IRC, ...), so that no matter which anchor a skimmer starts at, they
cannot miss the fact that we have a special disclosure procedure for
security issues.  If we are confident that readers interested in
submitting a security issue will not start at a mid-document anchor
without reading the beginning of this file, we could drop some or all
of these back-refs.

Also adjust the lines I touch to use one line per sentence, since
that's the standard in other OCI Projects (like the runtime spec [1]).

[1]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec/blob/v1.0.1/style.md#one-sentence-per-line

Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <wking@tremily.us>
wking added a commit to wking/distribution-spec that referenced this pull request Apr 11, 2018
CONTRIBUTING.md (which we got from project-template in be21fe9, *:
Pull in project-template 61d73a3, 2018-04-04, opencontainers#3) covers this same
space.  Dropping the contrib docs from the README (and instead linking
to CONTRIBUTING.md) keeps us DRY (vs. having the content in each
location), gets us the GitHub contributing UI improvements [1]
(vs. having the content only in the README), keeps the information
discoverable (vs. having the content only in CONTRIBUTING and not
linking from the README), and gives us more space in the README to
talk about the project itself (contributing docs are only useful for a
subset of README readers).

I've copy/pasted the CONTRIBUTING.md content for issues and the
mailing list into the README at Stephen's request [2].  Personally I
don't have a problem with requiring readers to click through to
CONTRIBUTING to get this information, but I'm not a maintainer.  I am
slightly concerned that the copy/pasted discussion channel information
is even further from the security-disclosure section (for a paranoid
approach, see [3]), but I'll leave addressing that or not up to the
maintainers as well.

[1]: https://help.github.com/articles/setting-guidelines-for-repository-contributors/
[2]: opencontainers#9 (comment)
[3]: opencontainers/project-template#57

Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <wking@tremily.us>
wking added a commit to wking/distribution-spec that referenced this pull request Apr 11, 2018
CONTRIBUTING.md (which we got from project-template in be21fe9, *:
Pull in project-template 61d73a3, 2018-04-04, opencontainers#3) covers this same
space.  Dropping the contrib docs from the README (and instead linking
to CONTRIBUTING.md) keeps us DRY (vs. having the content in each
location), gets us the GitHub contributing UI improvements [1]
(vs. having the content only in the README), keeps the information
discoverable (vs. having the content only in CONTRIBUTING and not
linking from the README), and gives us more space in the README to
talk about the project itself (contributing docs are only useful for a
subset of README readers).

I've copy/pasted the CONTRIBUTING.md content for issues and the
mailing list into the README at Stephen's request [2], turning
"Issues" into a link in the process.  I've left it as a non-link in
CONTRIBUTING.md to stay closer to the upstream project-template, but
wouldn't have a problem making it a link there to if the maintainers
preferred that.  Personally I don't have a problem with requiring
readers to click through to CONTRIBUTING to get this information, but
I'm not a maintainer.  I am slightly concerned that the copy/pasted
discussion channel information is even further from the
security-disclosure section (for a paranoid approach, see [3]), but
I'll leave addressing that or not up to the maintainers as well.

[1]: https://help.github.com/articles/setting-guidelines-for-repository-contributors/
[2]: opencontainers#9 (comment)
[3]: opencontainers/project-template#57

Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <wking@tremily.us>
wking added a commit to wking/distribution-spec that referenced this pull request Apr 11, 2018
CONTRIBUTING.md (which we got from project-template in be21fe9, *:
Pull in project-template 61d73a3, 2018-04-04, opencontainers#3) covers this same
space.  Dropping the contrib docs from the README (and instead linking
to CONTRIBUTING.md) keeps us DRY (vs. having the content in each
location), gets us the GitHub contributing UI improvements [1]
(vs. having the content only in the README), keeps the information
discoverable (vs. having the content only in CONTRIBUTING and not
linking from the README), and gives us more space in the README to
talk about the project itself (contributing docs are only useful for a
subset of README readers).

I've copy/pasted the CONTRIBUTING.md content for issues and the
mailing list into the README at Stephen's request [2], turning
"Issues" into a link in the process and making some other minor
copy-edits.  I've left it as a non-link in CONTRIBUTING.md to stay
closer to the upstream project-template, but wouldn't have a problem
making it a link there to if the maintainers preferred that.  I've
also added a security reference based on my in-flight [3], also at
Stephen's request [4].  Personally I don't have a problem with
requiring readers to click through to CONTRIBUTING to get this
information (as long as the security information stays close to the
information for other channels [3]), but I'm not a maintainer.

[1]: https://help.github.com/articles/setting-guidelines-for-repository-contributors/
[2]: opencontainers#9 (comment)
[3]: opencontainers/project-template#57
[4]: opencontainers#9 (comment)

Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King <wking@tremily.us>
@@ -20,25 +26,24 @@ Minutes from past meetings are archived [here][minutes].
## Mailing list

You can subscribe and browse the mailing list on [Google Groups][mailing-list].
Responsible disclosure for security issues is discussed [above](#security-issues).
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I don't think you need to repeat this sentence in every section. Just expand the opening line to say "do not create an issue, file a pull request, send a public message on the mailing list or IRC, or discuss it in the monthly meeting".

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I don't think you need to repeat this sentence in every section.

Right, that's:

If we are confident that readers interested in submitting a security issue will not start at a mid-document anchor without reading the beginning of this file, we could drop some or all of these back-refs.

from my initial post. Are you confident that folks with a security issue will notice the opening section of this file, even if they find it via a .../CONTRIBUTING.md#mailing-list link (for example)? You could also make this argument more narrowly, and say something like:

We don't need a back-ref from the mailing list section. Both it and the following IRC section are short, so even a hasty mailing-list-section skimmer is likely to notice the IRC-section back-ref.

But I'm fine droping whichever back-refs folks want me to drop. Do you want me to drop all of them? Or just from a few sections? Or maybe we can get a security ref that sticks to the top of the browser window (something like this if GitHub won't strip that out).

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Or maybe we can get a security ref that sticks to the top of the browser window (something like this if GitHub won't strip that out).

This is a no-go, because GitHub strips style attributes.

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