[mat-wg] Using Atlas for commercial services

On 06.09.2013, at 14:02 , Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at nic.fr> wrote:

> 1) Should selling commercial services built on the top of Atlas be
> explicitely prohibited (today, it is not)?
> 
> 2) Should selling credits be explicitely prohibited?


Stephane,

here is my personal opinion and contribution to the discussion:

SHORT VERSION

Ad 1: Commercial services using RIPE Atlas are OK as long as the profit is made on the value the service itself *adds* to the RIPE Atlas measurements. It is not OK to profit from the value created by others via RIPE Atlas. This means any commercial service will have to contribute back to RIPE Atlas the value it uses from it. This contribution will keep things stable and fair. This way commercial services strengthen RIPE Atlas instead of weakening it.  The art is in codifying and enforcing this principle. The community will have to come to consensus on the principle first and then the rules and enforcement methods. If we cannot reach community consensus about this, commercial services on top of RIPE Atlas should probably be explicitly prohibited. I expect that such a prohibition could be quite well enforced.

Ad 2:  Credits are neither intended nor designed to represent the value of the measurements they permit to be made. Credits are a relatively crude way to enforce fair use of a shared resource. Systematic, long-term trading in credits is a risky proposition since RIPE Atlas is a best-effort service and the rules about the credit system are subject to change. Currently trading in credits makes little sense because the system has ample capacity and we supply credits for reasonable measurement proposals free of charge. It is probably a good idea to document these caveats well. I expect that we could not enforce a prohibition against selling credits for money as long as we permit transfer of credits.


LONG VERSION:

Let me come at this from a more global angle. It is important to consider a few basic things when evolving the terms of use for RIPE Atlas. In my mind the most important ones to consider here are:

   What are the aims of RIPE Atlas?
   Who foots the bill of operating RIPE Atlas?
   Why have we implemented the credit system?


The aims of RIPE Atlas are in order of priority:

   1) Serve the operator community in general by providing measurements and tools based on the measurements.

   2) Serve individual probe hosts, RIPE NCC members and sponsors by enabling them to perform individual measurements.

   3) Provide both a useful tool and data for academic research, preferably research  with some benefit for operators.

Of course these aims are not absolute and subject to community consensus within RIPE.

RIPE Atlas is funded primarily by the RIPE NCC membership with contributions by sponsors. Probe hosts contribute their network bandwidth, a little installation work and a very small amount of electricity. Currently the vast majority of the resources for the operation and development of RIPE Atlas comes from the RIPE NCC membership.

RIPE Atlas enables us to share a common infrastructure for a specific class of measurements instead of building several smaller parallel infrastructures; therefore all measurement data is shared. The second aim above serves as a motivation for probe hosts and sponsors to contribute to RIPE Atlas, rather than build their own measurement infrastructure. 

Because RIPE Atlas is a shared and limited resource that is used by many, we addressed the obvious issue of fairness by implementing a credit system. The credit system serves to prevent unfair or excessive use by a minority and to relate use in some way to the contribution of each individual. The credits do not represent either the value or real cost of performing the measurements. Just consider that the RIPE NCC membership contributes the bulk of the funding for building and operating RIPE Atlas.

As a matter of policy the RIPE NCC does compete with its members or existing commercial activities in general.

As you have stated yourself, RIPE Atlas is a "best effort" service. There are no plans to offer formal service level guarantees to anyone.


Now with all this in mind, let me give you my personal answer for the questions you ask:

"Should selling commercial services built on the top of Atlas b explicitely prohibited (today, it is not)?"

My personal answer is: In principle there is no reason to prohibit commercial services based on RIPE Atlas. If a commercial service furthers the aims of RIPE Atlas and if the operator of the service provides a fair share of resources towards operating RIPE Atlas there is nothing against this.

The crux is of course in codifying the "ifs" in that statement.

Resources are needed to scale the service according to the load and secondly the RIPE NCC membership should not subsidise a particular commercial service. In my mind it is perfectly OK that providing the service may be cheaper and easier with RIPE Atlas existing than without it; in fact it would be extremely good if the RIPE NCC helped to create such opportunities. However no-one should obtain unfair advantage by using RIPE Atlas. 

The hard part in this of course is to determine what a fair share is and to consider competing services either as a show stopper or as a reason for equal access to RIPE Atlas.

All these questions, both in general and in particular, need community discussion and consensus. 


"Should selling credits be explicitely prohibited?"

Credits are not *meant* to represent any absolute value. Most importantly the credits are not a good representation of the actual cost to perform the measurements. So if there was a "trade" in credits the RIPE NCC membership will ask themselves why there is a monetary trade in a value which they are creating but not involving them. This can have all sorts of interesting consequences, most of them de-stabilising RIPE Atlas or even endangering its continued operation. Of course there are also some potential outcomes that would stabilise RIPE Atlas, but currently I consider the bad outcomes to be more likely. 

Also consider the following: RIPE Atlas is a best effort service. The RIPE NCC can generate credits at will. The RIPE NCC can change the amount of credits debited for specific measurements at will. The RIPE NCC can suspend or terminate measurements for operational reasons. All this means that there is no guarantee whatsoever that a number of credits will allow their holder to do a specific amount of experiments at a specific time. Therefore I would discourage anyone selling credits.

On the other hand we will not be able to enforce any prohibition to "sell" credits as long as we allow credit transfers.

I am afraid these are not really simple answers. They are intended to inform the discussion rather than to propose specific terms and conditions.

Daniel