[lir-wg] Name of the LIR WG

My, I hope reasonably correct and not too long winded comments:

On the website there are some definitions that can be helpful.

http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/about/
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/about/index.html

The fact that they are both often refered to as RIPE and that they
share a URL has often caused confusion. I worked there for a long
time and often spent my cycles trying to explain the difference to people.


RIPE NCC is a "Network Coordination Centre" that, amongst other things,
distributes IP addresses and AS#'s to it's members. These are
typically the ISP's who need these resources. I personally always try
and refer to the organisation as "the NCC" rather than "RIPE".


The NCC has members who pay membership fees and gain neutral services for
those fees. The services are defined/agreed by membership via activity
plans etc.

RIPE Meetings, together with the working groups mailing lists and RIPE
documents etc. constitute "RIPE". It is a much wider community than
the NCC membership, consisting of anyone who wishes to participate.
Many NCC members, called "Local Internet Registries" are also participants in RIPE.
You "participate" in RIPE rather than being a "member" as it doesn't have a formal
organisational structure.

RIPE also covers many more topics than NCC related ones, in theory a
wg could be created on any topic directly relevant to the Internet
community and it's operations.

Because of the large amount of NCC members that participate in RIPE and the extension
to envelope a wider community, RIPE has traditionally been, and IMHO
still is, the logical "place" to discuss and develop the policies
that the NCC uses.  Hence the lir-wg.

The name of the group may, or may not, be an optimal choice but I tend to agree
that making the fact that it is an open forum widespread knowledge is I think a
more important issue than what we name it.

The "NCC" does a lot of work mentioning the lir-wg wherever it sends
staff and I think the website is fairly clear. It's important that all
of us as a community also let others know about RIPE and it's various
working groups to others.

If people have good ideas on how to spread "the gospel" about both RIPE and more
specifically the Lir-wg I think all of us in the community would be glad to partake.


JC












>>     RIPE is more than just the RIPE NCC members, so 'ripe-wg' would be a
>>     wrong name.

PG> Sorry to bring up a previous discussion, but this contradicts what has been
PG> said on the thread(s) about membership fees.

PG> Can someone (Rob ...) please clarify what RIPE and RIPE-NCC are ?

PG> Peter