Format markdown and rewrite release cycle section

It described our old process of alpha / beta releases on a 3 month cycle.

Signed-off-by: Tim Smith <tsmith@chef.io>

1 files changed, 48 insertions, 95 deletions

diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 23dd85d7b7..389ae73076 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -15,84 +15,54 @@ We have a 3 step process that utilizes **Github Issues**:
 2. Create a Github Pull Request.
 3. Do [Code Review](#cr) with the **Chef Engineering Team** or **Chef Core Committers** on the pull request.
 
-### <a name="pulls"></a> Chef Pull Requests
+### Chef Pull Requests
 
-Chef is built to last. We strive to ensure high quality throughout the Chef experience. In order to ensure
-  this, we require a couple of things for all pull requests to Chef:
+Chef is built to last. We strive to ensure high quality throughout the Chef experience. In order to ensure this, we require a couple of things for all pull requests to Chef:
 
-1. **Tests:** To ensure high quality code and protect against future regressions, we require all the
-  code in Chef to have at least unit test coverage. See the [spec/unit](https://github.com/chef/chef/tree/master/spec/unit)
-  directory for the existing tests and use ```bundle exec rake spec``` to run them.
-2. **Green Travis Run:** We use [Travis CI](https://travis-ci.org/) in order to run our tests
-  continuously on all the pull requests. We require the Travis runs to succeed on every pull
-  request before being merged.
+1. **Tests:** To ensure high quality code and protect against future regressions, we require all the code in Chef to have at least unit test coverage. See the [spec/unit](https://github.com/chef/chef/tree/master/spec/unit) directory for the existing tests and use `bundle exec rake spec` to run them.
+2. **Green Travis Run:** We use [Travis CI](https://travis-ci.org/) in order to run our tests continuously on all the pull requests. We require the Travis runs to succeed on every pull request before being merged.
 
+### Chef Code Review Process
 
-### <a name="cr"></a> Chef 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.
 
-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 Core Committers** will review your code
-  and respond to you with any feedback they might have. The process at this point is as follows:
+Once you a pull request, the **Chef Engineering Team** or **Chef Core Committers** will review your code and respond to you with any feedback they might have. The process at this point is as follows:
 
 1. 2 thumbs-ups are required from the **Chef Engineering Team** or **Chef Core 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.
-
-If you would like to learn about when your code will be available in a release of Chef, read more about
-  [Chef Release Process](#release).
+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.
 
+If you would like to learn about when your code will be available in a release of Chef, read more about [Chef Release Cycles](#chef-release-cycles).
 
 ### Contributor License Agreement (CLA)
-Licensing is very important to open source projects. It helps ensure the
-  software continues to be available under the terms that the author desired.
 
-Chef uses [the Apache 2.0 license](https://github.com/chef/chef/blob/master/LICENSE)
-  to strike a balance between open contribution and allowing you to use the
-  software however you would like to.
+Licensing is very important to open source projects. It helps ensure the software continues to be available under the terms that the author desired.
+
+Chef uses [the Apache 2.0 license](https://github.com/chef/chef/blob/master/LICENSE) to strike a balance between open contribution and allowing you to use the software however you would like to.
 
-The license tells you what rights you have that are provided by the copyright holder.
-  It is important that the contributor fully understands what rights they are
-  licensing and agrees to them. Sometimes the copyright holder isn't the contributor,
-  such as when the contributor is doing work for a company.
+The license tells you what rights you have that are provided by the copyright holder. It is important that the contributor fully understands what rights they are licensing and agrees to them. Sometimes the copyright holder isn't the contributor, such as when the contributor is doing work for a company.
 
-To make a good faith effort to ensure these criteria are met, Chef requires an Individual CLA
-  or a Corporate CLA for contributions. This agreement helps ensure you are aware of the
-  terms of the license you are contributing your copyrighted works under, which helps to
-  prevent the inclusion of works in the projects that the contributor does not hold the rights
-  to share.
+To make a good faith effort to ensure these criteria are met, Chef requires an Individual CLA or a Corporate CLA for contributions. This agreement helps ensure you are aware of the terms of the license you are contributing your copyrighted works under, which helps to prevent the inclusion of works in the projects that the contributor does not hold the rights to share.
 
 It only takes a few minutes to complete a CLA, and you retain the copyright to your contribution.
 
-You can complete our
-  [Individual CLA](https://supermarket.chef.io/icla-signatures/new) online.
-  If you're contributing on behalf of your employer and they retain the copyright for your works,
-  have your employer fill out our
-  [Corporate CLA](https://supermarket.chef.io/ccla-signatures/new) instead.
+You can complete our [Individual CLA](https://supermarket.chef.io/icla-signatures/new) online. If you're contributing on behalf of your employer and they retain the copyright for your works, have your employer fill out our [Corporate CLA](https://supermarket.chef.io/ccla-signatures/new) instead.
 
 ### Chef Obvious Fix Policy
 
-Small contributions such as fixing spelling errors, where the content is small enough
-  to not be considered intellectual property, can be submitted by a contributor as a patch,
-  without a CLA.
+Small contributions such as fixing spelling errors, where the content is small enough to not be considered intellectual property, can be submitted by a contributor as a patch, without a CLA.
 
-As a rule of thumb, changes are obvious fixes if they do not introduce any new functionality
-  or creative thinking. As long as the change does not affect functionality, some likely
-  examples include the following:
+As a rule of thumb, changes are obvious fixes if they do not introduce any new functionality or creative thinking. As long as the change does not affect functionality, some likely examples include the following:
 
-* Spelling / grammar fixes
-* Typo correction, white space and formatting changes
-* Comment clean up
-* Bug fixes that change default return values or error codes stored in constants
-* Adding logging messages or debugging output
-* Changes to ‘metadata’ files like Gemfile, .gitignore, build scripts, etc.
-* Moving source files from one directory or package to another
+- Spelling / grammar fixes
+- Typo correction, white space and formatting changes
+- Comment clean up
+- Bug fixes that change default return values or error codes stored in constants
+- Adding logging messages or debugging output
+- Changes to 'metadata' files like Gemfile, .gitignore, build scripts, etc.
+- Moving source files from one directory or package to another
 
-**Whenever you invoke the “obvious fix” rule, please say so in your commit message:**
+**Whenever you invoke the "obvious fix" rule, please say so in your commit message:**
 
 ```
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
@@ -107,67 +77,50 @@ Date:   Wed Sep 18 11:44:40 2013 -0700
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ```
 
-## <a name="issues"></a> Chef Issue Tracking
+## Chef Issue Tracking
 
 Chef Issue Tracking is handled using Github Issues.
 
-If you are familiar with Chef and know the component that is causing you a problem or if you
-  have a feature request on a specific component you can file an issue in the corresponding
-  Github project. All of our Open Source Software can be found in our
-  [Github organization](https://github.com/chef/).
+If you are familiar with Chef and know the component that is causing you a problem or if you have a feature request on a specific component you can file an issue in the corresponding Github project. All of our Open Source Software can be found in our [Github organization](https://github.com/chef/).
 
-There is also a listing of the various Chef products and where to file issues that can be
-  found in the Chef docs in the [community contributions section](https://docs.chef.io/community_contributions.html#issues-and-bug-reports).
-
-Otherwise you can file your issue in the [Chef project](https://github.com/chef/chef/issues)
-  and we will make sure it gets filed against the appropriate project.
+There is also a listing of the various Chef products and where to file issues that can be found in the Chef docs in the [community contributions section](https://docs.chef.io/community_contributions.html#issues-and-bug-reports).
 
+Otherwise you can file your issue in the [Chef project](https://github.com/chef/chef/issues) and we will make sure it gets filed against the appropriate project.
 
 ### Useful Github Queries
 
 Contributions go through a review process to improve code quality and avoid regressions. Managing a large number of contributions requires a workflow to provide queues for work such as triage, code review, and merging. A semi-formal process has evolved over the life of the project. Chef maintains this process pending community development and acceptance of an [RFC](https://github.com/chef/chef-rfc). These queries will help track contributions through this process:
 
-* [Issues that are not assigned to a team](https://github.com/chef/chef/issues?q=is%3Aopen+-label%3AAIX+-label%3ABSD+-label%3Awindows+-label%3A%22Chef+Core%22++-label%3A%22Dev+Tools%22+-label%3AUbuntu+-label%3A%22Enterprise+Linux%22+-label%3A%22Ready+For+Merge%22+-label%3AMac+-label%3ASolaris+)
-* [Untriaged Issues](https://github.com/chef/chef/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+-label%3ABug+-label%3AEnhancement+-label%3A%22Tech+Cleanup%22+-label%3A%22Ready+For+Merge%22)
-* [PRs to be Reviewed](https://github.com/chef/chef/labels/Pending%20Maintainer%20Review)
-* [Suitable for First Contribution](https://github.com/chef/chef/labels/Easy)
-
-## <a name="release"></a> Chef Release Cycles
+- [Issues that are not assigned to a team](https://github.com/chef/chef/issues?q=is%3Aopen+-label%3AAIX+-label%3ABSD+-label%3Awindows+-label%3A%22Chef+Core%22++-label%3A%22Dev+Tools%22+-label%3AUbuntu+-label%3A%22Enterprise+Linux%22+-label%3A%22Ready+For+Merge%22+-label%3AMac+-label%3ASolaris+)
+- [Untriaged Issues](https://github.com/chef/chef/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+-label%3ABug+-label%3AEnhancement+-label%3A%22Tech+Cleanup%22+-label%3A%22Ready+For+Merge%22)
+- [PRs to be Reviewed](https://github.com/chef/chef/labels/Pending%20Maintainer%20Review)
+- [Suitable for First Contribution](https://github.com/chef/chef/labels/Easy)
 
-Our primary shipping vehicle is operating system specific packages that includes
-  all the requirements of Chef. We call these [Omnibus packages](https://github.com/chef/omnibus)
+## Chef Release Cycles
 
-We also release our software as gems to [Rubygems](https://rubygems.org/) but we strongly
-  recommend using Chef packages since they are the only combination of native libraries &
-  gems required by Chef that we test throughly.
+Our primary shipping vehicle is operating system specific packages that includes all the requirements of Chef. We call these [Omnibus packages](https://github.com/chef/omnibus)
 
-Our version numbering closely follows [Semantic Versioning](http://semver.org/) standard. Our
-  standard version numbers look like X.Y.Z which mean:
+We also release our software as gems to [Rubygems](https://rubygems.org/) but we strongly recommend using Chef packages since they are the only combination of native libraries & gems required by Chef that we test throughly.
 
-* X is a major release, which may not be fully compatible with prior major releases
-* Y is a minor release, which adds both new features and bug fixes
-* Z is a patch release, which adds just bug fixes
+Our version numbering roughly follows [Semantic Versioning](http://semver.org/) standard. Our standard version numbers look like X.Y.Z which mean:
 
-We frequently make `alpha` and `beta` releases with version numbers that look like
-  `X.Y.Z.alpha.0` or `X.Y.Z.beta.1`. These releases are still well tested but not as
-  throughly as **Minor** or **Patch** releases.
+- X is a major release, which may not be fully compatible with prior major releases
+- Y is a minor release, which adds both new features and bug fixes
+- Z is a patch release, which adds just bug fixes
 
-We do a `Minor` release approximately every 3 months and `Patch` releases on a when-needed
-  basis for regressions, significant bugs, and security issues.
+After shipping a release of Chef we bump the `Minor` version by one to start development of the next minor releaae. All merges to master trigger an increment of the `Patch` version, and a build through our internal testing pipeline. We do a `Minor` release approximately every month, which consist of shipping one of the already auto-incremented and tested `Patch` versions. For example after shiping 12.10.24, we incremented Chef to 12.11.0\. From there 18 commits where merged bringing the version to 12.11.18, which we shipped as an omnibus package.
 
-Announcements of releases are available on [Chef Blog](https://www.chef.io/blog/) when they are
-  available.
+Announcements of releases are made to the [chef mailing list](https://discourse.chef.io/c/chef-release) when they are available.
 
 ## Chef Community
 
-Chef is made possible by a strong community of developers and system administrators. If you have
-  any questions or if you would like to get involved in the Chef community you can check out:
+Chef is made possible by a strong community of developers and system administrators. If you have any questions or if you would like to get involved in the Chef community you can check out:
 
-* [chef](https://discourse.chef.io/) mailing list
-* [\#chef](https://botbot.me/freenode/chef/) and [\#chef-hacking](https://botbot.me/freenode/chef-hacking/) IRC channels on irc.freenode.net
+- [chef](https://discourse.chef.io/) mailing list
+- [#chef](https://botbot.me/freenode/chef/) and [#chef-hacking](https://botbot.me/freenode/chef-hacking/) IRC channels on irc.freenode.net
 
 Also here are some additional pointers to some awesome Chef content:
 
-* [Chef Docs](https://docs.chef.io/)
-* [Learn Chef](https://learn.chef.io/)
-* [Chef Inc](https://www.chef.io/)
+- [Chef Docs](https://docs.chef.io/)
+- [Learn Chef](https://learn.chef.io/)
+- [Chef Inc](https://www.chef.io/)