feat: added devcontainers

[norton120]

I want to contribute, but really hate developing on the metal if I can avoid it. This PR creates a devcontainer alternative to the currently described development env in contributing.md

• Add VS Code dev container with Java 21 JDK and Gradle support
• Readme

[CLAassistant]

All committers have signed the CLA.

[adutra]

This is a great addition to Nessie, thank you @norton120!

Checking licensing issues before approving for good.

[dimas-b]

Thanks for expanding Nessie development options, @norton120 ! I hope people find it useful :)

[snazy]

Hi @norton120 ,

Thanks a lot for the effort on this PR!

We've noticed that the commits are co-authored by "Claude" (norton120 and claude committed + Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.ai/code), Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>. It is however not clear which parts are authored by you and which are authored by "Claude".

(From this ASF page about "generative tooling", which contains a pretty good explanation on that topic:)
The Apache-2.0 license, and [our] (...) Contribution License Agreement, both remind contributors that they are responsible for disclosing any copyrighted materials in submitted contributions that are not their original creation. This is as true when using generative AI tooling, as it is when using materials from public websites or code from other open-source projects.
When disclosing these materials, contributors should also identify the licensing for these materials (...).
While in general, content generated by a non-human (e.g., machine or monkey) is not copyrightable, if content consists of some portions generated by AI and other portions authored by a human, the portions authored by a human may be copyrightable.

Can you clarify?

[norton120]

Hi @norton120 ,

Thanks a lot for the effort on this PR!

We've noticed that the commits are co-authored by "Claude" (norton120 and claude committed + Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.ai/code), Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>. It is however not clear which parts are authored by you and which are authored by "Claude".

(From this ASF page about "generative tooling", which contains a pretty good explanation on that topic:) The Apache-2.0 license, and [our] (...) Contribution License Agreement, both remind contributors that they are responsible for disclosing any copyrighted materials in submitted contributions that are not their original creation. This is as true when using generative AI tooling, as it is when using materials from public websites or code from other open-source projects. When disclosing these materials, contributors should also identify the licensing for these materials (...). While in general, content generated by a non-human (e.g., machine or monkey) is not copyrightable, if content consists of some portions generated by AI and other portions authored by a human, the portions authored by a human may be copyrightable.

Can you clarify?

Ah man, this is a whole can of worms. I use Claude Code and Cursor as part of my normal dev workflow, so the distinction between which content was "written by me" vs "written by the tool" is nebulous at best. I believe I had Claude generate the first pass of the markdown, then I made some manual tweaks, then I gave Claude feedback and instructions for another pass, then I made a few finishing touches manually... so who wrote the markdown? If the license is being pedantic about the definition of "generated by a non-human" (not saying it is, I'm saying it is unclear to me), any content where the author leveraged genAI, text autocomplete or even a spell checker is, technically, not copyrightable. I dug around a little on the subject, and the phrase "sufficient human authorship" keeps coming up in reference to copyrightability - but without a practical litmus test of what is "sufficient." It smells like a much bigger question for the ASF to provide real, actionable guidelines for use with the license; and truthfully I wasn't looking to spur a landmark decision over some devenv tweaks. I am happy to gitignore the container files and just use them locally to be safe on the licensing side (in which case this PR will be updated to a .gitignore change).

[snazy]

Ah man, this is a whole can of worms.

Totally true. The copyright(ability) of AI generated artifacts is totally up in the air.

practical litmus test of what is "sufficient." It smells like a much bigger question

Yep, there's no "exact measure", it's all subjective, which imposes some risk wrt licensing.

We've been discussing this internally. The TL;DR, as you mention, is that it's unclear who the actual author is, because we can only accept contributions from individuals.

As much as I would like to, we cannot accept this contribution. If you want, we can leave the PR open, so people can still refer to it.

[snazy]

(Adding a "merge blocker" - for future reference)