docs(authors): show maintainer affiliations and link contributor graph

[danielmeppiel]

Why

Two issues with the current AUTHORS:

1. Vendor-neutrality signal is missing. Both maintainers are listed with no affiliation. APM is hosted under microsoft/ and reads as a single-vendor project, even though Sergio is at EPAM Systems and the contributor base spans Red Hat, Inditex, Wolters Kluwer, Mirego, Check Point, Linde, Microsoft, EPAM, plus ~30 independents. The cross-organization reality is invisible.

2. The contributor section is stale. It still says [This space will be updated as contributors join the project] while the project already has 40+ contributors per git shortlog.

What

Aligns AUTHORS with how foundation-grade OSS projects (CNCF, Linux Foundation, OpenTelemetry, Envoy, Kubernetes) frame employer-sponsored maintainership:

• Both maintainers listed with explicit affiliations (Microsoft, EPAM Systems). This is the highest-leverage neutrality signal available without changing governance.
• Drop the Creator and Lead Maintainer / Maintainer hierarchy. Flat list. Lead-vs-not framing implies single-vendor control. Effective ownership is unchanged (CODEOWNERS still reflects current responsibilities).
• Replace the volunteer-OSS personal capacity convention (dishonest for paid maintainers) with the CNCF-pattern commitment: project decisions are made in the project's interest, independent of any employer's commercial priorities, with COI disclosure when relevant.
• Link to the GitHub contributors graph instead of a placeholder. Stays current automatically.

What this does NOT do

• Does not add a maintainer-onboarding process or GOVERNANCE.md (deliberately scoped small).
• Does not change CODEOWNERS, decision-making, or release process.
• Does not open the project to new maintainers — it just describes the existing two more honestly.

A future GOVERNANCE.md (decision model, how to become a maintainer, dispute resolution) is the natural next step when the project is ready to formalize.

Reference

CNCF Project Governance Guidelines: https://contribute.cncf.io/maintainers/governance/

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Updates the repository’s AUTHORS file to better reflect maintainer affiliations and to keep the contributor listing current via GitHub’s contributors graph, improving neutrality signaling and attribution accuracy.

Changes:

• Reworks the maintainer section into a flat list and adds explicit employer affiliations.
• Adds a short neutrality/COI disclosure statement for maintainers.
• Replaces the stale contributor placeholder with a link to the GitHub contributors graph.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
AUTHORS	Updates maintainer metadata/wording and replaces the contributor placeholder with a live GitHub contributors link.

Copilot's findings

• Files reviewed: 1/1 changed files
• Comments generated: 1

[Copilot]

The maintainer list uses an em dash ("—"), which is non-ASCII. The repo's encoding rules explicitly discourage em/en dashes for cross-platform safety; please replace these with an ASCII separator (e.g., "-" or "--"). See .github/instructions/encoding.instructions.md (disallowed characters list).

Suggested change

	* Daniel Meppiel (@danielmeppiel) — Microsoft
	* Sergio Sisternes (@sergio-sisternes-epam) — EPAM Systems
	* Daniel Meppiel (@danielmeppiel) - Microsoft
	* Sergio Sisternes (@sergio-sisternes-epam) - EPAM Systems