My, I hope reasonably correct and not too long winded comments: On the website there are some definitions that can be helpful. http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/about/ http://www.ripe.net/ripe/about/index.html The fact that they are both often refered to as RIPE and that they share a URL has often caused confusion. I worked there for a long time and often spent my cycles trying to explain the difference to people. RIPE NCC is a "Network Coordination Centre" that, amongst other things, distributes IP addresses and AS#'s to it's members. These are typically the ISP's who need these resources. I personally always try and refer to the organisation as "the NCC" rather than "RIPE". The NCC has members who pay membership fees and gain neutral services for those fees. The services are defined/agreed by membership via activity plans etc. RIPE Meetings, together with the working groups mailing lists and RIPE documents etc. constitute "RIPE". It is a much wider community than the NCC membership, consisting of anyone who wishes to participate. Many NCC members, called "Local Internet Registries" are also participants in RIPE. You "participate" in RIPE rather than being a "member" as it doesn't have a formal organisational structure. RIPE also covers many more topics than NCC related ones, in theory a wg could be created on any topic directly relevant to the Internet community and it's operations. Because of the large amount of NCC members that participate in RIPE and the extension to envelope a wider community, RIPE has traditionally been, and IMHO still is, the logical "place" to discuss and develop the policies that the NCC uses. Hence the lir-wg. The name of the group may, or may not, be an optimal choice but I tend to agree that making the fact that it is an open forum widespread knowledge is I think a more important issue than what we name it. The "NCC" does a lot of work mentioning the lir-wg wherever it sends staff and I think the website is fairly clear. It's important that all of us as a community also let others know about RIPE and it's various working groups to others. If people have good ideas on how to spread "the gospel" about both RIPE and more specifically the Lir-wg I think all of us in the community would be glad to partake. JC
RIPE is more than just the RIPE NCC members, so 'ripe-wg' would be a wrong name.
PG> Sorry to bring up a previous discussion, but this contradicts what has been PG> said on the thread(s) about membership fees. PG> Can someone (Rob ...) please clarify what RIPE and RIPE-NCC are ? PG> Peter