Official MCP Registry v1.8.0 adds crates.io as a package type and restricts organization namespaces to owners

The official MCP Registry shipped v1.8.0 on July 13, its only release of the July window and its first since v1.7.9 on May 12. The headline change adds cargo (crates.io) as a supported package registry type (PR #1207), extending the registry's package ecosystems beyond npm, PyPI, NuGet, and OCI images just as the Rust SDK reached its stable 3.0.

Two governance-adjacent changes narrow how publishing works. Organization namespaces are now granted only to organization owners rather than all members (PR #1383), tightening who can claim an org's namespace. And new CI auto-closes pull requests that try to publish servers through the repository itself (PR #1393), keeping publication on the API path.

The release also hardens validation: mcp-name matching gains PyPI and NuGet anchoring (PR #1331), mangled publisher metadata is rejected (PR #1310), and a missing package is now distinguished from a missing version on PyPI and npm (PR #1411). API surface changes include a 499 status for client-cancelled GET /v0/servers requests, internal error detail no longer leaking in 500 responses, and PATCH allowed in CORS for the status endpoints. The release ships mcp-publisher binaries as assets.

Status remains unchanged: the README continues to state the registry is in preview, that breaking changes or data resets may occur, and that the Registry API is under a v0.1 API freeze. No GA milestone was reached in the window.