[ripe-list] RIPE Accountability Task Force Update at RIPE 75

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?

Legally, the RIPE NCC is answerable only to its members.  This is a
requirement under Dutch law, and there is nothing surprising or
unexpected about it.

The RIPE NCC membership is mostly made up of the people who are active
in the RIPE Community, and for the most part, there is very little
divergence between RIPE community policy and RIPE NCC actions.  There
are one or two instances I can think of, e.g. charging for ASNs
(explicitly overridden by NCC member vote, but let's face it, this isn't
an issue that's worth throwing the toys out of the pram over) and
rolling out RPKI for PI assignments (RIPE NCC agreed that this was a
mistake to proceed without policy and then waited for the RIPE Community
policy to request this before proceeding).

In practice, there is a 25 year history of implementing RIPE Community
policies in good faith.  If this changes in the future, I have no doubt
that the RIPE NCC membership will want to know why, and if good reasons
aren't provided, then the RIPE NCC board will be held to account.

> And relations of RIPE NCC to RIPE Community are just 4 letters E I P R in the name?
> 
> 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?
> 
> And all those are official statements of the RIPE NCC Executive Board?

Nigel signed that email in his position as Chairman of the board, which
looks pretty official.

I don't know what EIPR stands for in this context.  Could you explain?

If you have some alternative suggestions about how to manage global IP
number resource allocations other than through a relationship with IANA,
then please speak up and we can have a discussion about your suggestions.

Nick

> 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
>>
>>
> 
> 
> Sent via RIPE Forum -- https://www.ripe.net/participate/mail/forum
> 
>