Dear Mihail, all, Defining what exactly a diverse group is will be difficult. There are 20,000 members and over 5,000 subscribed to this list, with many obviously following closely. It is also interesting to note that over 400 people have unsubscribed from the members-discuss list in this month alone. Some are very committed to this topic, while others are actively removing themselves from the conversation. This highlights how difficult it can be to reach a good consensus or make sure all members are engaged on the topics that matter.

But clearly there are strong opinions from a large set of members that we can’t ignore. Translating this into a good Charging Scheme for all members will still be a difficult task, and one that we will have to invest a lot of time and effort into together with the membership. And I completely agree that we should not be afraid to discuss our budget or other things that the members want to discuss. In fact, that discussion is vital if we are to arrive at a good model.

Every year during the Activity Plan & Budget process, we do everything we can to get input from our members, but it seems this discussion mainly takes place when we discuss the Charging Scheme. As a financial person, I do understand why, as it can be seen as a boundary for the Cost Budget. But the intent of the Charging Scheme is to ensure sufficient revenue to execute our committed activities. Our Activity Plan & Budget defines these activities. The redistribution vote required by our governance is the safeguard to ensure an excess of funds can be returned to our members (it can also ensure a shortage of funds is charged to our members). As CFO, I will do what I can to ensure we remain conservative and reasonable, but at the same time, we must ensure we have sufficient funds.

Active participation is something that is always high on the agenda of the RIPE NCC. But I do want to highlight the position we are currently in. We see requests to ensure active engagement, and to give more training and carry out communication in local languages, but to increase these efforts, which we are more than willing to do, we need to ensure we have sufficient funds. We also have priorities such as enhancing the security of the Registry and members’ resources and accommodating the greatly increased complexity in the registry. In short, we are being asked to do significantly more while significantly cutting costs, so something will have to give somewhere.

I do think this is a challenge every organisation faces, whether it’s a for-profit company or a not-for-profit company. We have accepted this challenge and will continue to focus on cost efficiency, but to be successful in this challenge we also need a stable association, and financial uncertainty does not help stability. 

Kind regards,

Simon-Jan Haytink RIPE NCC, CFO

Hello Simon!

I appreciate your work and thanks for noticing this discussion.

You’re mentioning a significant and diverse group of members. As you can see in proposal just overnight it was signed by 450 LIRs from different places in the whole region, big and small. Does it count as diverse group? I honestly believe it’s majority of those who actually read this list.

Member proposal is formed as simple “do not change” because current logic clearly prohibits to propose anything else. I thinks it’s terrible on its own.

Proposed by board charging scheme was posted as a draft just recently and got hundreds of disagreements instantly. This clearly indicates it needs to be reworked. Yet it wasn’t done. Me, and many other members want to see clear answer why it wasn’t even tried.

Reasoning behind not doing anything is absurd:

1. If members didn’t voted for this last year - you should not remove such option this year. Maybe they changed their mind?  After all if members disagree with anything other proposed they still can vote for original scheme.

2. Members clearly indicated that RIPE budget decrease MUST be discussed. It’s always sounds scary, but this happens and there is no shame in discussing that.

Pardon my wording, but I still see no clear reason why different scheme wasn’t worked, only friendly responses without intent to do something. Sometimes not even friendly, just statements that it won’t be discussed.

If you state that board is not opposed to different charging scheme or budget cuts - please clearly indicate why it was not done.

Thanks!

On 26 Apr 2024, at 10:59, Simon-Jan Haytink <simonjh@ripe.net> wrote:

Simon