project: document modern branch and tag practices

Signed-off-by: Bjorn Neergaard <bjorn.neergaard@docker.com>

project/BRANCHES-AND-TAGS.md

@@ -1,32 +1,39 @@
 Branches and tags
 =================
 
-Note: details of the release process for the Engine are documented in the
-[PATCH-RELEASES.md](https://github.com/moby/moby/blob/master/project/PATCH-RELEASES.md).
+> Note: details of the release process of the project are documented in [PATCH-RELEASES.md](PATCH-RELEASES.md).
 
 # Branches
 
-The docker/docker repository should normally have only three living branches at all time, including
-the regular `master` branch:
+`master` serves as the development branch for future releases of the project.
+All changes should be made to the `master` branch, and changes to release branches should only be made in the form of cherry-picked commits, if possible.
+The sponsoring maintainers of a release branch serve as the primary point of contact, and are available to provide guidance on contributing changes to their respective branches.
 
-## `docs` branch
+Keep in mind that release branches only accept bug and security fixes; new features will generally not be considered for backport to release branches.
 
-The `docs` branch supports documentation updates between product releases. This branch allow us to
-decouple documentation releases from product releases.
+Currently (and previously) maintained release branches are documented in the table below:
 
-## `release` branch
+| Branch Name                                    | Sponsoring Maintainer(s)                       | Contribution Status   | Expected End of Maintenance  | Known Distributors                                                   |
+|------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------|-----------------------|------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------|
+| master (development branch)                    | The Moby Project [MAINTAINERS](../MAINTAINERS) | N/A                   | -                            | N/A                                                                  |
+| 24.0                                           | @thaJeztah, @rumpl, @neersighted               | Maintained            | TBD                          | [Docker, Inc.](https://docker.com)                                   |
+| 23.0                                           | @corhere, @cpuguy83                            | Maintained            | TBD                          | [Mirantis](https://mirantis.com), [Microsoft](https://microsoft.com) |
+| 20.10                                          | @corhere, @cpuguy83                            | Maintained (security) | December 2023                | [Mirantis](https://mirantis.com), [Microsoft](https://microsoft.com) |
 
-The `release` branch contains the last _released_ version of the code for the project.
+> Note: The Moby Project provides source code releases. Binary distributions are available from multiple contributing parties, and known distributions can be discovered in [PACKAGERS.md](PACKAGERS.md).
 
-The `release` branch is only updated at each public release of the project. The mechanism for this
-is that the release is materialized by a pull request against the `release` branch which lives for
-the duration of the code freeze period. When this pull request is merged, the `release` branch gets
-updated, and its new state is tagged accordingly.
+## Contribution Status
+
+The contribution status of a branch is meant to set contributor expectations for acceptance of changes into a branch, as well as document what level of contribution or maintenance the sponsoring maintainers expect to perform. This status is informational and not binding.
+
+- **Maintained** - actively developed by project maintainers; accepting contributions and backports; in-scope for security advisories 
+- **Maintained (security)** - no longer actively developed; may accept contributions and backports for critical security issues; in-scope for security advisories
+- **Unmaintained** - no longer actively developed; not accepting contributions; out-of-scope for security advisories
 
 # Tags
 
-Any public release of a compiled binary, with the logical exception of nightly builds, should have
-a corresponding tag in the repository.
+All releases of The Moby Project should have a corresponding tag in the repository.
+The project generally attempts to adhere to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org) whenever possible.
 
 The general format of a tag is `vX.Y.Z[-suffix[N]]`: