Hi Ronald, May I propose to do a call and explain a bit about the community and the NCC roles ? And the WG's etc ? Regards, Erik Bais Verstuurd vanaf mijn iPhone
Op 11 aug. 2016 om 01:37 heeft Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg@tristatelogic.com> het volgende geschreven:
You all already know that I'm no good at all at this whole brevity thing, but I'll try.
First I must thank Sander Steffann <sander@steffann.nl> for helping me to understand the rather confusing relationship between "RIPE" and "RIPE NCC". The latter has a formal legal charter, which I assume is a binding legal document under Dutch law. The former (RIPE itself) is in contrast a rather informal amorphous (and egalitarian!) blob of participants which nicely bends over backwards to be inclusive, even to the extent of admitting into its club Americans of dubious repute, if not to say sanity, including even those who have never contributed a single guilder to the common enterprise.
But this still leaves me with the question: To which entity do the various RIPE documents, and, in particular, ripe-001 apply? To which entity are these documents "binding" legally or otherwise? Either? Neither?
Are the documents ripe-001 and more generally, ripe-XXX merely informal statements of intent, or mission, which have binding legal effect only upon "RIPE" which does not itself even exist as a legal entity? Is ripe-001 only an informal statement of original intent for RIPE, one which has now neither any legal enforcable force or effect upon either RIPE or RIPE NCC?
That would seem to be the case, legally speaking. RIPE NCC has formal Articles of Association, and the ripe-001 document is not a part of that. Thus, in the unlikely event that there were to be found some apparent conflict between the RIPE NCC Articles of Association and, for example, the ripe-001 document, then the terms of the former would override and nullify any conflicting provision of the latter, correct?
Sorry. I'm sure that most subscribers to this list don't have the least interest in exploring any of this legal fine print or mumbo jumbo. However I am persuaded that no progress can be made without reference to the fundamental documents and baseline intent of these associations, both formal (RIPE NCC) and informal (RIPE). If general agreement can be reached on anything... a proposition that is itself still dubious at best... then it is only likely to be arrived at within the context of, and with all due respect for all those generally accepted agreements which have already and previously been achieved.
Regards, rfg