Add CONTRIBUTING.md

README.md

@@ -23,28 +23,21 @@ License
 Bitcoin Core is released under the terms of the MIT license. See [COPYING](COPYING) for more
 information or see http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT.
 
-Development process
+Development Process
 -------------------
 
-Developers work in their own trees, then submit pull requests when they think
-their feature or bug fix is ready.
-
-If it is a simple/trivial/non-controversial change, then one of the Bitcoin
-development team members simply pulls it.
-
-If it is a *more complicated or potentially controversial* change, then the patch
-submitter will be asked to start a discussion (if they haven't already) on the
-[mailing list](https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev)
-
-The patch will be accepted if there is broad consensus that it is a good thing.
-Developers should expect to rework and resubmit patches if the code doesn't
-match the project's coding conventions (see [doc/developer-notes.md](doc/developer-notes.md)) or are
-controversial.
-
 The `master` branch is regularly built and tested, but is not guaranteed to be
 completely stable. [Tags](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tags) are created
 regularly to indicate new official, stable release versions of Bitcoin.
 
+The contribution workflow is described in [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md).
+
+The developer [mailing list](https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev)
+should be used to discuss complicated or controversial changes before working
+on a patch set.
+
+Developer IRC can be found on Freenode at #bitcoin-dev.
+
 Testing
 -------