DOC, MAINT: minor process/docs improvements

[tylerjereddy]

Fairly low priority, but bookmarking these for consideration:

• Relax our README requirements on LLM usage to allowing it, but requiring developers to disclose the usage and maintain responsibility for licensing on their end. The reality is that LLMs are probably here to stay and most OSS projects are allowing their usage with disclosure now.
• Document/encourage folks to contribute PRs from branches pushed to their forks rather than the main repo--mostly a safety precaution, I just started doing it again on this repo; the previous private version of the repo didn't really allow that because of how CI works on private repos, but it works just fine for public repo CI via fork
• Related to point above--double check branch protection rules for main and maintenance/xxx branches used for releases. Once folks are opening PRs from their forks, maybe purge out main repo branches except for main and maintenance/xxx branches to keep it clean/clear.