Disclosure: Commercial Interest

[zohebk8s]

I am a maintainer in this repository, and I am recording a commercial interest so that it is on the record before it bears on any decision.

I build Custodian, a key broker for model weights that uses the Weight Custody Manifest SDK as a dependency rather than a fork.

• I will note this interest on any proposal where it applies, whether I am proposing it or taking part in its review.
• I will recuse where Custodian's own design is the question.
• I will not present Custodian as endorsed by this project or as the reference implementation. It is neither.
• I will update this notice if the interest changes materially.

Mohammed Zoheb Shaik

[github-actions]

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[imran-siddique]

Accepted, and on the record. Thank you for filing it before it bore on anything rather than after.

The four undertakings are the right ones, and the third is the one that matters most to this project: not presenting Custodian as endorsed or as the reference implementation. An SDK with a commercial dependant is healthy; an SDK whose dependant is read as its blessed implementation is not, and that distinction is easier to protect before anyone has reason to blur it.

Recusal where Custodian's own design is the question is accepted as stated. It does not extend to the SDK itself: you remain a maintainer on the dependency and your review there is wanted, which is the ordinary position for anyone who builds on something they help maintain.

Two follow-ups, neither a criticism of the filing.

The disclosure is missing from the repository the interest actually depends on. You have filed in agent-manifest, ca2a and cmcp. Custodian depends on the Weight Custody Manifest SDK, and weight-custody-manifest has no disclosure. That is the one repo where a WCM-dependent commercial interest is most likely to bear on a decision, so please file there too.

A standing disclosure should not live only in an issue. An issue can be closed, and it is not somewhere a reviewer looks before weighing a proposal. GOVERNANCE.md exists in weight-custody-manifest, cmcp and agent-manifest, which is where a reader goes for exactly this. Proposing: add a short Disclosures section to each GOVERNANCE.md naming the interest and the recusal scope, and reference this issue as where it was first recorded. Once that lands these can close, with the durable record in the file and the provenance in the history.

Happy for you to carry that as a PR, or I will if you would rather not be the one editing the governance file that names you.