chore(docs): update contributor wording and support channel info

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/config.yml

@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 blank_issues_enabled: true
 contact_links:
+  - name: Kong Gateway Open Source Community Pledge
+    url: https://github.com/Kong/kong/blob/master/COMMUNITY_PLEDGE.md
   - name: Feature Request
     url: https://github.com/Kong/kong/discussions/categories/ideas
     about: Propose your cool ideas and feature requests at the Kong discussion forum

.github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md

@@ -2,6 +2,10 @@
 NOTE: Please read the CONTRIBUTING.md guidelines before submitting your patch,
 and ensure you followed them all:
 https://github.com/Kong/kong/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#contributing
+
+Refer to the Kong Gateway Community Pledge to understand how we work
+with the open source community:
+https://github.com/Kong/kong/blob/master/COMMUNITY_PLEDGE.md
 -->
 
 ### Summary

COMMUNITY_PLEDGE.md

@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+# Our pledge to the open source community
+
+Kong Gateway is not only an awesome open source project, but also part
+of the product offering of Kong Inc.  We have a large team of product
+people, software developers, testers and release engineers working on
+Kong Gateway.  We make many of the enhancements to Kong Gateway in the
+Community Edition, so our open source community directly benefits from
+the commercial work that we do.
+
+Recognizing that we operate as a commercial entity, we face the
+challenge of balancing our commercial interests with the desire to
+accommodate and support open source users and contributors
+effectively.
+
+## Response time to GitHub issues and pull requests
+
+In the Kong Gateway team, we're committed to maintaining a rapid and
+timely response to community contributions, promising to acknowledge
+and engage within a dedicated timeframe of 10 working days. It is
+important to note, however, that while we strive to be as responsive
+as possible, we may not always be able to offer immediate solutions to
+every reported problem or incorporate every submitted pull request
+into the product.
+
+## Maintaining an active working set
+
+We will be closing pull requests or issue reports when we made the
+decision that we will not be able to merge or resolve them in the
+foreseeable future.  We do that in the interest of keeping our working
+set manageable, as accumulating pull requests and issues which don't
+make progress does not help improving Kong Gateway in the long run.
+
+We automatically close issues and pull requests for which we do not
+get responses to our questions or update requests within 3 weeks.

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -6,6 +6,9 @@ document is for you! It intends to be both an entry point for newcomers to
 the community (with various technical backgrounds), and a guide/reference for
 contributors and maintainers.
 
+Please have a look at our [Community Pledge](./COMMUNITY_PLEDGE.md) to
+understand how we work with our open source contributors!
+
 Consult the Table of Contents below, and jump to the desired section.
 
 # Table of Contents
@@ -63,22 +66,19 @@ https://konghq.com/kong-enterprise-edition/ or contact us at
 
 ### Community Edition
 
-There are multiple channels where you can get answers from the community
-or the maintainers of this project:
-
-- Our public forum, [Kong Nation](https://discuss.konghq.com) is great for
-  asking questions, giving advice, and staying up-to-date with the latest
-  announcements. Kong Nation is frequented by Kong maintainers.
-- Two chat channels are used by the community, but are rarely visited by Kong
-  maintainers:
-  - [Gitter](https://gitter.im/Kong/kong)
-  - IRC, registered on freenode as
-    [#kong](https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=kong)
+For questions around the use of the Community Edition, please use
+[GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/Kong/kong/discussions).  You
+can also join our [Community Slack](http://kongcommunity.slack.com/)
+for real-time conversations around Kong Gateway.
 
 **Please avoid opening GitHub issues for general questions or help**, as those
 should be reserved for actual bug reports. The Kong community is welcoming and
 more than willing to assist you on those channels!
 
+Our public forum, [Kong Nation](https://discuss.konghq.com) is great
+for asking questions, giving advice, and staying up-to-date with the
+latest announcements.
+
 [Back to TOC](#table-of-contents)
 
 ## Where to report bugs?
@@ -110,9 +110,7 @@ on [Submitting a patch](#submitting-a-patch) for details.
 
 ## Contributing
 
-We welcome contributions of all kinds, there is no need to do code to be helpful!
-All of the following tasks are noble and worthy contributions that you can
-make without coding:
+In addition to code enhancements and bug fixes, you can contribute by
 
 - Reporting a bug (see the [report bugs](#where-to-report-bugs) section)
 - Helping other members of the community on the support channels
@@ -141,13 +139,15 @@ https://github.com/Kong/docs.konghq.com/
 
 ### Proposing a new plugin
 
-We **do not** accept new plugins into the core repository. The plugins that are
-currently part of this repository are there because of historical reasons, but
-will be pushed into separate repositories in the foreseeable future.
+We **do not** generally accept new plugins into this repository. The
+plugins that are currently part of it form the foundational set of
+plugins which is available to all installations of Kong Gateway.
+Specialized functionality should be implemented in plugins residing in
+separate repository.
 
-If you are interested in writing a new plugin for your own needs, you should begin by
-reading the [Plugin Development
-Guide](https://docs.konghq.com/latest/plugin-development).
+If you are interested in writing a new plugin for your own needs, you
+should begin by reading the
+[Plugin Development Guide](https://docs.konghq.com/latest/plugin-development).
 
 If you already wrote a plugin, and are thinking about making it available to
 the community, we strongly encourage you to host it on a publicly available
@@ -167,9 +167,12 @@ To give visibility to your plugin, we advise that you:
 
 ### Submitting a patch
 
-Feel free to contribute fixes or minor features, we love to receive Pull
-Requests! If you are planning to develop a larger feature, come talk to us
-first!
+Feel free to contribute fixes or minor features by opening a Pull
+Request.  Small contributions are more likely to be merged quicker
+than changes which require a lot of time to review.  If you are
+planning to develop a larger feature, please talk to us first in the
+[GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/Kong/kong/discussions)
+section!
 
 When contributing, please follow the guidelines provided in this document. They
 will cover topics such as the different Git branches we use, the commit message
@@ -187,8 +190,6 @@ to verify a few things:
   development documentation for additional details)
 - The tests are passing: run `make test`, `make test-all`, or whichever is
   appropriate for your change
-- Do not update CHANGELOG.md yourself. Your change will be included therein
-  due time if it is accepted, no worries!
 
 If the above guidelines are respected, your Pull Request has all its chances
 to be considered and will be reviewed by a maintainer.

README.md

@@ -65,6 +65,7 @@ Contribute to the Plugin Hub and ensure your next innovative idea is published a
 ## Contributing
 
 We ❤️ pull requests, and we’re continually working hard to make it as easy as possible for developers to contribute. Before beginning development with the Kong API Gateway, please familiarize yourself with the following developer resources:
+- Community Pledge ([COMMUNITY_PLEDGE.md](COMMUNITY_PLEDGE.md)) for our pledge to interact with you, the open source community.
 - Contributor Guide ([CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md)) to learn about how to contribute to Kong.
 - Development Guide ([DEVELOPER.md](DEVELOPER.md)): Setting up your development environment.
 - [CODE_OF_CONDUCT](CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md) and [COPYRIGHT](COPYRIGHT)
@@ -77,12 +78,14 @@ Please see the [Changelog](CHANGELOG.md) for more details about a given release.
 
 ## Join the Community
 
+- Check out the [docs](https://docs.konghq.com/)
+- Join the [Kong discussions forum](https://github.com/Kong/kong/discussions)
 - Join the Kong discussions at the Kong Nation forum: [https://discuss.konghq.com/](https://discuss.konghq.com/)
-- Follow us on Twitter: [https://twitter.com/thekonginc](https://twitter.com/thekonginc)
-- Check out the docs: [https://docs.konghq.com/](https://docs.konghq.com/)
-- Keep updated on YouTube by subscribing: [https://www.youtube.com/c/KongInc/videos](https://www.youtube.com/c/KongInc/videos)
-- Read up on the latest happenings at our blog: [https://konghq.com/blog/](https://konghq.com/blog/)
-- Visit our homepage to learn more: [https://konghq.com/](https://konghq.com/)
+- Join our [Community Slack](http://kongcommunity.slack.com/)
+- Read up on the latest happenings at our [blog](https://konghq.com/blog/)
+- Follow us on [X](https://x.com/thekonginc)
+- Subscribe to our [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/c/KongInc/videos)
+- Visit our [homepage](https://konghq.com/) to learn more
 
 ## Konnect Cloud