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{mcpdesc}

Governance

The {mcpdesc} project is an independent open source initiative, led by its maintainers and open to contributions from the wider community. This page summarizes how the project is run; the full model lives in the GOVERNANCE.md document.

Roles

Section titled “Roles”
  • Contributors propose, discuss, or submit improvements — code, docs, specification feedback, schemas, examples, issue triage, design input, or tool integrations. Contributions are licensed under Apache-2.0. Contributors retain copyright; there is no CLA, no copyright assignment, and no DCO sign-off.
  • Maintainers steward the project: they review and merge changes, guide the roadmap, maintain the specification, publish releases, curate the tools catalog (see Add a tool), and keep licensing, attribution, and documentation coherent. Contributing does not by itself confer maintainer status.

How decisions are made

Section titled “How decisions are made”

The project uses a lightweight, consensus-oriented model. Most changes are decided through normal issue and pull-request review — accepted when there is sufficient agreement, no unresolved blocking concern, and at least one maintainer approval.

Larger changes — to the MCP Description specification, breaking schema changes, major tooling, governance/licensing rules, branding, or public positioning — call for broader feedback before merging, with the decision and rationale documented.

Specification changes

Section titled “Specification changes”

The MCP Description specification is one of the project’s core assets. Proposed changes should explain the problem, describe the change with examples, consider compatibility with existing mcpdesc documents, state whether they are additive, compatible, or breaking, and update schemas, docs, and examples. Breaking changes are rare, clearly documented, and released with an appropriate version bump per semantic-versioning principles.

Relationship to Cisco-originated work

Section titled “Relationship to Cisco-originated work”

The initial MCP Description specification and related tools originated at Cisco DevNet and were released as open source through Cisco Open. The {mcpdesc} project builds on that open-licensed foundation as an independent initiative — not a Cisco product, service, or official Cisco standardization effort. See Attribution.