Hi Pavel,

Thank you for your well thought out response.

I appreciate your time invested in trying to answer this question and I do not disagree fundamentally with attempting to do so with raw data as much as possible. As much as I would like to say I could stand side by side with you in such an effort to continue to dig, we all have our limitations in time that can be allotted, however, I fully support and appreciate having as much data public as possible.

Personally, I am of a very suspicious opinion that RIPE NCC has become quite the bloated organization potentially stifled by its own size.

I would love to see your findings shared with the community, and as active as the members mailing list is currently, I do believe the time is ripe (pun intended) for members to pay attention to additional data and metrics. I feel evaluating expenses, and then extrapolating the benefit from said expenses should be first and foremost on the list.

I look forward to what may come.

Daniel~


On 5/14/24 12:06 PM, Pavel Odintsov wrote:

Hello, Daniel and all Community Members!


Thank you very much for your question!


About one month ago, the RIPE NCC Board proposed a draft of a new charging scheme that stirred intense debate and resistance from a significant portion of RIPE NCC Members. This motivated me to join a group (https://t.me/ripe_budget_talks) to better understand RIPE NCC finances and, ideally, to propose an alternative charging scheme that aligns with the interests and needs of as many RIPE NCC Members across the regions as possible. Our group had fewer than a dozen members at its inception and has grown to 110 members, including RIPE NCC executives and the RIPE NCC Board Chair. 


Our first project was to propose an alternative charging scheme, but we ran into a significant obstacle which almost derailed our effort and caused delays - we missed crucial data in machine-readable formats. We lack detailed machine-readable information about RIPE NCC members, LIRs (and their relationship with RIPE NCC members) and their resources (IPv4, IPv6, PI, ASN) that they hold. In response to this, we had to source side data to compensate for the lack of this information from official sources. As we progressed, we discovered a total lack of information about agreements with legacy resource holders and associated fees. These details are crucial for modeling charging schemes, yet they are clearly missing - this fact was confirmed in writing by RIPE NCC staff.


The charging scheme is only one aspect of the RIPE NCC budget. Hence, we sought to understand how RIPE NCC allocates its funds, and yet again, we encountered significant gaps in our research which we were unable to fill using information obtained through official channels. Please let me know if you’re interested in details and I’ll be glad to share all our findings with Community.


We cannot propose alternative charging schemes or find ways to reduce budget without having all the information needed available to every single Member of RIPE NCC in a clear and (ideally) machine readable format.


My personal focus as a potential RIPE NCC Board member will be on increased transparency as it’s the only way to engage the incredible skill of our wide RIPE NCC Member community and use it to find solutions to our current and future challenges.


United we stand!


The RIPE Community is invited to join our initiative, by contributing knowledge and expertise to improve the RIPE Community and RIPE NCC. Our main communication platform is Telegram but we will be happy to add more platforms if needed: https://t.me/ripe_budget_talks 


If you have any feedback or ideas to share, please contact me here or reach me via the following channels:


Thank you!




On Tue, 14 May 2024 at 15:16, Daniel Pearson <daniel@privatesystems.net> wrote:
It appears this mailing list does not get used very much but I would
like a direct comment from each proposed candidate up for election on
the charging scheme changes, and your view point on if RIPE should be
reducing its budget and how the current situation is being handled.


Thanks for your time.

Daniel~


--
eb-candidates mailing list
eb-candidates@ripe.net
https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/eb-candidates


--
Sincerely yours, Pavel Odintsov