Improve documentation around the DCO requirement

[Misjohns]

The current documentation around the Developer Certificate of Origin requirement isn't clear. The documentation should provide additional instructions on the purpose of the DCO and guide both technical and non-tech users on how they should provide the DCO for their submission.

[nathan-weinberg]

Where are you proposing this change be made?

A few clicks in our CONTRIBUTING.md takes me here - is this what you're talking about? What about the existing documentation is unclear?

[nathan-weinberg]

In fact, exact instructions for how to do this are already present in our CONTRIBUTING.md here

[Misjohns]

@nathan-weinberg For the UI version, an SME user who creates the content for the contribution may not be the individual handling the GH tasks associated with a contribution (this may be an admin role). In that use case, how does the SME sign-off? Or would the admin handle this step?

[nathan-weinberg]

@Misjohns I don't follow - what does this have to do with contributors to this repo? Did you mean to open this issue elsewhere?

[nathan-weinberg]

Discussed in the Community meeting - transferring this issue to the Taxonomy repo

[nimbinatus]

Thanks for moving it, @nathan-weinberg!

@Misjohns I'll take this on and make the updates here in the README as well as on the docs site :)

cc @jjasghar @kelbrown20

[kelbrown20]

Im not sure about how it would be added in the UI, but we do have it on the docs site in the contributor section https://docs.instructlab.ai/community/CONTRIBUTING/#developer-certificate-of-origin-dco
Also CI fails immediately without it, so its visible there.

Maybe just little blurb about it the DCO being necessary for contributions might be helpful?

[nimbinatus]

Im not sure about how it would be added in the UI, but we do have it on the docs site in the contributor section https://docs.instructlab.ai/community/CONTRIBUTING/#developer-certificate-of-origin-dco Also CI fails immediately without it, so its visible there.

Maybe just little blurb about it the DCO being necessary for contributions might be helpful?

If I put on my user hat, I think one of the issues is that a developer certificate of origin doesn't make any sense to, say, a scientist contributing knowledge. The docs site just says one is necessary; it doesn't explain what we use them for and why someone who isn't a developer would need to fill it out. And we don't really explain the non-technical user how to sign something other than the GitHub UI, which is still probably beyond a non-technical user. That part of the docs is still focused on a developer submitting code, to be honest, as it still talks about commit messages and the developer doing something—both things that may not be familiar to a non-developer/non-technical-industry person.

[kelbrown20]

Im not an expert on it, but I thought most of it was for some legal reasons. Someone who worked with the legal team might be able to shed more light ☀️

[nimbinatus]

Im not an expert on it, but I thought most of it was for some legal reasons. Someone who worked with the legal team might be able to shed more light ☀️

Ah, sorry, I'm not being clear. Yes, most of it is for legal reasons (you release the work to us kind of thing). But the naming convention is unfortunately going to cause confusion because someone will say, "I'm not a developer."

I'm pretty sure we want the submission process for taxonomy to be easy for someone to use who never opens a terminal to try any git-based command. Outside of this repo, the DCO and process absolutely makes sense as written. But from the point-of-view of this repo and potential contributors here, fixing the DCO issue is a mystery. Many of them probably never will come to GitHub if there's a UI that's part of instructlab, and will only get updates via email! So we need to have happy paths that explain how to sign things in their terms.

[github-actions]

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