imran-siddique · Oct 15, 2026 · Oct 15, 2026
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 # Contributing
 
+AgenTrust is an independent open-source project. No company funds, owns or directs it; contributions are voluntary.
+
 Thank you for your interest in contributing to AgenTrust projects.
 
 ## How to Contribute

@@ -6,4 +6,4 @@ This repository contains org-wide community health files for the [agentrust-io](
 - [`CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md`](CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md): applies to all repos in this org
 - [`CONTRIBUTING.md`](CONTRIBUTING.md): default contributing guide
 - [`SECURITY.md`](SECURITY.md): default security policy
-- [`SPONSORS.md`](SPONSORS.md): organization-wide sponsor recognition policy
+- [`SPONSORS.md`](SPONSORS.md): independence statement and past sponsor credit
@@ -1,20 +1,9 @@
 # Sponsors
 
-AgenTrust is an open ecosystem whose projects are governed through their
-published project processes. Sponsors provide funding, engineering time,
-infrastructure, or other in-kind support. Sponsorship does not confer project
-ownership, governance authority, or control over technical decisions.
+AgenTrust is an independent open-source project. No company funds, owns or directs it; contributions are voluntary.
 
-## Current sponsors
+OPAQUE Systems sponsored early development until October 2026.
 
-### OPAQUE Systems
-
-Founding engineering and infrastructure sponsor, fellowship funder, and active
-contributor to the AgenTrust ecosystem.
-
-## Recognition policy
-
-Sponsor recognition records support for the ecosystem. Each repository's
-licence, charter, maintainer list, and governance process remain authoritative
-for legal and technical stewardship. Sponsorship is distinct from partnership,
-adoption, maintainership, and ownership.
+Past sponsorship conferred no project ownership, governance authority, or
+control over technical decisions. Each repository's licence, charter,
+maintainer list, and governance process remain authoritative.
@@ -18,12 +18,9 @@ agentrust-io is the open trust layer built to close it: replacing "we have guard
 
 The specifications, SDKs, and conformance tests are free and open. Begin in software; advance to hardware-backed and post-quantum assurance as requirements demand.
 
-**OPAQUE Systems is a founding engineering and infrastructure sponsor and an
-active contributor.** Sponsorship supports the work but does not confer
-ownership of AgenTrust projects or governance authority over their technical
-decisions. Each repository's licence, charter, maintainer list, and published
-governance process define its legal and technical stewardship. See the
-[organization sponsor policy](https://github.com/agentrust-io/.github/blob/main/SPONSORS.md).
+**AgenTrust is an independent open-source project. No company funds, owns or directs it; contributions are voluntary.** Each repository's licence, charter, maintainer list, and published
+governance process define its legal and technical stewardship. See
+[SPONSORS.md](https://github.com/agentrust-io/.github/blob/main/SPONSORS.md).
 
 [![License](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-Apache_2.0_%2F_MIT_%2F_CC_BY_4.0-blue.svg)](#projects)
 [![Linux Foundation](https://img.shields.io/badge/TRACE-Linux_Foundation_series_(in_formation)-6366f1)](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/)
@@ -55,7 +52,7 @@ These projects are developed in the open. We intend to propose them to recognize
 
 - **TRACE**: going to the **Linux Foundation as its own series**, "TRACE Specification, a Series of LF Projects, LLC". Formation is in progress with the LF standards team; governance has been brought into the shape LF requires ([trace-spec#127](https://github.com/agentrust-io/trace-spec/pull/127)). This supersedes the earlier plan to co-host under CoSAI or under the LF entity hosting MCP. Founding co-editor seats are open now.
 - **Agent Manifest**: we intend to submit it through CoSAI under OASIS Open, building on CoSAI Workstream 4.
-- **AGT (Agent Governance Toolkit)**: the runtime governance engine this stack builds on, created by Imran Siddique (Chief Platform Officer, OPAQUE) while at Microsoft and released under the MIT license: [microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit](https://github.com/microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit).
+- **AGT (Agent Governance Toolkit)**: the runtime governance engine this stack builds on, created by Imran Siddique (Project Lead) while at Microsoft and released under the MIT license: [microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit](https://github.com/microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit).
 
 ---
 
@@ -169,7 +166,7 @@ The eBook calls for policy at four layers (model, agent, tool, request) with fle
 
 The repository and its anchor and inclusion-proof format ([registry-anchor-v1](https://github.com/agentrust-io/trace-spec/blob/main/spec/registry-anchor-v1.md)) are public, so an outside party can verify an anchor without asking us for anything.
 
-**AGT (Agent Governance Toolkit)** ([microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit](https://github.com/microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit), created by Imran Siddique (Chief Platform Officer, OPAQUE) while at Microsoft and released under the MIT license — 6,300+ stars; 7 of the OWASP Agentic Top 10 covered fully and 3 partially, self-assessed) provides the runtime governance layer: trust score decay (a score at deployment is meaningless six months later), scope-chain delegation (monotonic narrowing: agent-to-agent delegation with verifiable credentials), and a fleet daemon for multi-agent orchestration.
+**AGT (Agent Governance Toolkit)** ([microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit](https://github.com/microsoft/agent-governance-toolkit), created by Imran Siddique (Project Lead) while at Microsoft and released under the MIT license — 6,300+ stars; 7 of the OWASP Agentic Top 10 covered fully and 3 partially, self-assessed) provides the runtime governance layer: trust score decay (a score at deployment is meaningless six months later), scope-chain delegation (monotonic narrowing: agent-to-agent delegation with verifiable credentials), and a fleet daemon for multi-agent orchestration.
 
 ### Multi-Agent Coordination Governance
 

@@ -11,9 +11,9 @@ Anthropic's [*Zero-Trust for AI Agents*](https://claude.com/blog/zero-trust-for-
 
 agentrust-io stands on two things that already exist and work.
 
-**1 · Policy — the Agent Governance Toolkit (AGT).** Created by Imran Siddique (now OPAQUE's Chief Platform Officer) at Microsoft and open-sourced under MIT: 5,100+ stars, 830+ forks since its April 2026 public launch; 10/10 OWASP Agentic Top 10 coverage; ships trust-score decay, scope-chain delegation (monotonic narrowing), and a multi-agent fleet daemon. AGT remains a Microsoft-owned MIT project; any standards home for it is Microsoft's to announce, not ours.
+**1 · Policy — the Agent Governance Toolkit (AGT).** Created by Imran Siddique (Project Lead) at Microsoft and open-sourced under MIT: 5,100+ stars, 830+ forks since its April 2026 public launch; 10/10 OWASP Agentic Top 10 coverage; ships trust-score decay, scope-chain delegation (monotonic narrowing), and a multi-agent fleet daemon. AGT remains a Microsoft-owned MIT project; any standards home for it is Microsoft's to announce, not ours.
 
-**2 · Enforcement — a confidential runtime, pluggable by design.** The policy bundle is sealed and measured inside a TEE on the confidential-computing silicon you already operate — Intel TDX, AMD SEV-SNP, NVIDIA CC, or TPM. The OPAQUE Confidential AI is the hardware-rooted, managed reference implementation; an operator can bring its own.
+**2 · Enforcement — a confidential runtime, pluggable by design.** The policy bundle is sealed and measured inside a TEE on the confidential-computing silicon you already operate — Intel TDX, AMD SEV-SNP, NVIDIA CC, or TPM. An operator can bring its own runtime.
 
 agentrust-io doesn't reinvent governance — it makes AGT's policy **provable** by binding it to a hardware-attested confidential runtime. A policy decision isn't just enforced; it's evidenced.
 
@@ -33,10 +33,6 @@ The stack runs at one of four conformance levels (L0–L3): software-only → TE
 
 TRACE (Trust Runtime Attestation and Compliance Evidence) is the portable governance record at the center of the stack: a single attestation envelope (EAT/JWT, per the IETF RATS model) that **carries the other standards' evidence** — build provenance (SLSA), workload identity (SPIFFE SVID), model inventory (AIBOM), a cryptographic bill of materials (CBOM — the crypto libraries and algorithms in use), and the agent's tool-call transcript — cryptographically bound and anchored in an append-only transparency log. One verifiable record that proves **what an agent was** and **what it did**, reconstructable after the fact and confirmable by a party with no reason to trust the operator. Open spec, going to the Linux Foundation as its own series.
 
-## About OPAQUE
-
-OPAQUE is the Confidential AI company. Born from UC Berkeley's RISELab (now the Sky Compute Lab), OPAQUE lets organizations run AI models, agents, and workflows on their most sensitive data with hardware-rooted isolation and verifiable evidence that approved governance policies were enforced. Founded by Dr. Ion Stoica (co-founder of Databricks; co-director, UC Berkeley Sky Compute Lab), Dr. Raluca Ada Popa (ACM Grace Hopper Award winner; Senior Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, where she leads AGI security research), and Rishabh Poddar (CTO). Aaron Fulkerson is Chief Executive Officer, and Imran Siddique, creator of the open-source Agent Governance Toolkit (AGT), is Chief Platform Officer. OPAQUE created the Confidential Computing Summit, now co-hosted with the Linux Foundation.
-
 ---
 
 Questions or to get involved: [GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/orgs/agentrust-io/discussions) · back to the [org overview](README.md).