"Daniel" == Daniel Karrenberg <daniel.karrenberg@ripe.net> writes:
Daniel> But is this acceptable to the RIPE NCC memebrship in the Daniel> long run? Speaking as a non-member of RIPE NCC, I say no. It's not acceptable. To be honest Daniel, I think your mail indicates the way RIPE NCC seems to have lost sight of its raison d'etre. Why is an RIR -- whose main (only?) job is to hand out IP addresses and AS numbers -- getting into other areas that are clearly outside its core business? ARIN and APNIC are providing that core service to their regions with a fraction of the staff that the NCC has. IMO, there must be complete transparency about non-core activities at the NCC. These things should be seen to be self-funding or else making a profit to reduce the costs of the core services and/or membership fees. If they're not, there will be a suspicion that it's the other way round. ie Income from the NCC's monopoly operations are cross-subsidising these non-core activities. That will eventually come to the attention of the anti-competition people in Brussels. This will be a Very Very Bad Thing since there are voices in governments and the Commission who are looking for a pretext to regulate this uncontrolled "Internet thing". Now I know you'll say that NCC does these other things as "a benefit to the community" and "the membership has approved them". I'm not so sure that either of these things are really true. Has a majority of the *membership* -- not those who turn up for the AGM or take the time to vote -- ever approved the activity plan? Has the activity plan ever said something like "non-core activity X costs Y. If it is dropped, the membership fees can be reduced by Z. Do you want to pay for X?"? Now I don't doubt that these non-core activities are a benefit to the community. But perhaps only in the short-term. If the NCC does these things "for free", it makes it almost impossible for others to enter the market. It also undervalues the service being provided. In the long run, this is very, very bad. Take DNS hosting for instance. RIPE NCC provides free service to any TLD that asks. That's fine for poor countries with weak infrastructure. Nobody should dispute that helping them is a good and noble thing and that NCC should be doing that. But serving anyone else means those TLDs are conditioned into getting something for nothing. They get into a mindset that they shouldn't have to pay for DNS service or arrange proper contracts, set up SLAs, put servers in decent IXPs, etc. In short, they don't need to take their responsibilities seriously. That has to be a Very Bad Thing in the long run. Then there's the issue about having so much important DNS stuff on ns.ripe.net. That's a Very Bad Thing too, though I know you disagree with me on this. Here's another example of how NCC crossed the line IMO. The NCC was involved in the development of NSD. Fair enough, you might think. The gene pool of DNS software is too small. So having another DNS implementation is good, so this was/is a benefit to the community. However one of the NCC's members -- my former employer, Nominum -- was/is selling its own DNS implementation. So Nominum's money in membership fees was and is used to fund the NCC to develop software that competed with and undercut Nominum's product. This cannot be right. [As it turns out Nominum doesn't consider NSD to be a credible competitor or a revenue threat to its software, but that's another story.] There may well be further examples of this sort of thing in the other non-core activities of RIPE NCC. Why would anyone pay for a place on my DNSSEC training course (if I was selling one) when NCC is offering their course for free? I fear that your plans for DNS monitoring will similarly distort the market. Firstly, potential customers -- TLDs, regulators, etc -- will expect to get this type of service for free instead of paying for it as they really should. Secondly, it will prevent commercial operators, some of whom could well be NCC members, from providing this kind of service. Who can compete with free? That brings up the concerns about monopolies and cross-subsidies again. Thirdly, this service could become a bottomless pit for NCC resources. What are the current and projected costs and how are they covered? Fourthly, it's an example of NCC extending itself well beyond its core function. Finally, incrementally adding these sorts of non-core services doesn't just entrench the NCC monopoly: it embraces and extends it. Another point. The internet and telecommunications industry has been suffering in the last few years. Budgets have been cut and companies have downsized or gone bust. At this time NCC should be seen to be tightening its belt, not adding new non-core activities. This rant probably doesn't belong in dns-wg. Followups should go somewhere else: the NCC services list perhaps?