Standard CHANGELOG CONTRIBUTING LICENSE README for app repos

[phil-davis]

Some app repos have all of these files, but some are missing:

• CHANGELOG.md - has been created recently in most app repos

• CONTRIBUTING.md - missing in quite a lot of app repos

• LICENSE or LICENSE.md - missing in quite a lot of app repos

• README.md - exists

• Add any that are missing

• Adjust app Makefile to include them in the app release tarball

• Check that the content is OK

Questions:

LICENSE seems to be for when it is just plain text GPL etc license pasted in. Existing ones are either GPL v2 or v3. When creating a new LICENSE file, do we paste in v2 or v3 by default?

LICENSE.md seems to be for when there is a different/special license that has formatting. I guess we use the .md extension when needed?

CHANGELOG.md LICENSE and README.md are typically written into the app release tarball. Should we also put CONTRIBUTING.md in the tarball?

[patrickjahns]

When it comes to licenses and license files - please be aware that some apps have split license and thus the header of the file is the source of truth for that app

A CONTRIBUTING.md is from my POV not necessary - what benefits do we gain in having this ( compared to specialized .github folders with markdown files for issues/prs ? )

[phil-davis]

When it comes to licenses and license files - please be aware that some apps have split license and thus the header of the file is the source of truth for that app

So actually there is not always the possibility to publish a single LICENSE file for an app. In that case, should we publish a LICENSE file that says something like "see individual file headers for license information", or words like "this app is licenced under both GPLv2 and MIT licenses - see individual file headers for license information", or do we not publish any LICENSE file?

A CONTRIBUTING.md is from my POV not necessary - what benefits do we gain in having this ( compared to specialized .github folders with markdown files for issues/prs ? )

Good point. If someone makes a decision about this, then we can leave the decision documented here and then not have to care if CONTRIBUTING.md exists or not.

Depending on the answers to the above, then it might be that CONTRIBUTING.md and LICENSE are not required app repo files. In that case we will be able to close this issue.

[sac-cas]

It would be great if you could add support for .adoc files so we get rid of the messages of missing README files :)