On 19/10/2017 10:56, Alexander Isavnin wrote:
Dear Nigel!
May i clarify some things?
Did i get right, that "RIPE NCC is secretariat for community" is a fairy tale,
told to RIPE Meetings newcomers?
No, RIPE NCC is a membership association which carries out Network
coordination activities on behalf of its membership and generally
governed by policies formulated by the RIPE community.
And relations of RIPE NCC to RIPE Community are just 4 letters E I P R in the
name?
In practice no, as, except in extremely strange circumstances, the RIPE
NCC conducts activities according to policies formulated by the RIPE
community.
And Number Resources allocation in this region happens not on behalf of
Community, but because of some kind of MoUs signed by Dutch association with
American corporation owned by other American corporation?
Completely incorrect.
And all those are official statements of the RIPE NCC Executive Board?
No they are statements made by me, wearing my Chairman hat. I'm happy to
take off the hat and make the statements as Nigel Titley, Internet
person at large, if it makes you happier.
What Jim and I were both trying to say, and obviously something got lost
in translation, is that ever since the PDP's inception the NCC has
carried out the policies as formulated by the RIPE Community, without
exception, even when this has cost the RIPE NCC membership considerable
amounts of money. However, because we are bound by fiduciary duty (ie we
mustn't do anything that's illegal under Dutch law) we *cannot* agree to
do absolutely *anything* that might come out of the policy process. To
take a ludicrous example, suppose the community asked us to sign an MOU
with a Colombian drug cartel, something which under the PDP they could
actually ask us to do, we would decline courteously.
Nigel
Kind regards,
Alexander Isavnin
There's probably no need to formalise the NCC-RIPE relationship with anything more than a
sentence saying "The NCC (Board) will take account of the policies developed by RIPE
whenever it deploys and operates services". ie The NCC listens to RIPE but isn't
compelled to obey no matter what.
Jim beat me to it (they obviously get up earlier North of The Border).
The NCC Board does of course take account of policies, and also comments
on them as part of the evaluation process that the NCC does during
policy development. In all cases up until now we have instructed the NCC
to follow policy. However, as board members we have certain fiduciary
duties which cannot be overridden by policy. Faced with a situation such
as Jim describes we have two choices: not implement the policy or resign
and hope that someone else agrees to carry the can.
Nigel
Chairman RIPE NCC Board
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