Maintainer's responsibility (was Re: [dp-tf] Quadlogy of person proposals)

Hi Janos,

zsako at 3c-hungary.hu (Janos Zsako) wrote:

> >Not different. A lot of maintainers do not belong to LIRs, so there is
> >no contract.
> 
> I was not clear enough, I suppose. I see three cases:
> 
> 1. Maintainer is a LIR - we have a contract.

Agreed, that's easy.


> 2. Maintainer created by LIR - bound by LIR contract.

Not agreed. A lot of maintainers are pretty old, the link to the LIR
(who may as well have gone out of business years ago) is not necessarily
existent anymore. Moreover, a lot of maintainers have been created in
order to relieve the LIR of the maintainance of customer objects (for
customers who want to do that themselves). And, on another leg entirely,
there isn't necessarily a special contract between LIR and customer
that covers RIPE DB updates / maintainer issues. I don't see how the
maintainer's owner would be bound by RIPE-LIR contracts.


> 3. Maintainer authorized/created by RIPE NCC - authenticated by RIPE NCC
> and bound by DB Terms and Conditions (you deleted the part that referred
> to this case, see below).

I tend to shorten the stuff I quote a lot - sometimes the scissors are too
sharp - sorry for that. Nonetheless, there would then have to be a contract
or agreement between maintainer holder and the RIPE NCC, and that's a hard
case to make, if the RIPE NCC _insists_ on creating a maintainer for some
reason, but the holder doesn't want to sign agreements.

> As we will require all objects to be maintained in the future, it
> seems enough for me to make sure we have the above principle accepted
> by the _maintainers_. We may have to think over the process of creating
> a new maintainer. We may have to have it created by an existing maintainer
> or by some otherwise authenticated person (who can then assume the
> responsibility for the data they maintain in the future).

You will not be able to reach all (or even a majority) of maintainers in
your lifetime. This is a hopeless case, I'm afraid.

If you are happy with like 50%, then it's doable.

Yours,
	Elmar.