Contribution Guidelines
==========================

While this is an open source project there are a few considerations that make
it somewhat unique in how it is managed. The first issue is that the development
workflow is a hybrid between internal development and CI/CD systems and external
develop and associated CI/CD systems. 

* This project contains a mixture of licenses depending on the section. The vast
  majority is under a Microchip proprietary license that is restrictive.
* Contributors must be aware of the specific license they are working under and
  must be aware that by submitting the patch that they agree to the terms of the
  license covering the target file.
* Sources contained in the third_party path are covered by true open source
  licenses and as such are not bound by Microchip's license restrictions.
* Third party contributions for HALs must be licensed under MIT, BSD (3 clause),
  or Apache 2.0 license and are placed in third_party/hal/<platform>
* Pull requests (PR) must attest to reviewing of these rules, that licensing terms
  have been reviewed, the submitter has approval to submit the changes under the
  target license terms. 


