By making this a null reference it looks like it's possible for us to prematurely GC cmdInfo. This class gets a CommandInfo object from somewhere ( https://github.com/mono/monodevelop/blob/fixLeaks/main/src/core/MonoDevelop.Ide/MonoDevelop.Components.Commands/CommandCheckMenuItem.cs#L66 ) and stores it in the field. It's reasonable to assume that this may be the only reference to the CommandInfo object so it should not be a WeakReference as it should not be GC'ed.