Some thoughts I was not able to say at GM-2011
Hello everybody, At the beginning I'd like to apologize for my poor spoken English which prevented me to clearly state my opinion at GM. It is not related to any problems with EB preventing me to do that! Thank them for the opportunity given and sorry for emotional expressions. I hope that something from my speech at GM was understandable, but to make my position more consistent I'll sum the thoughts I wanted to express. My main concern is about openness of the decisions if we speak about money, not technical and police things. All the three interrelated finance documents (The Activity Plan, which defines the expenses and is the base for the Budget, which defines the balance between the expenses and incomes, and the Charging Scheme as a result of defined incomes to cover expenses) were compiled inside of the RIPE NCC and were not clear to me and (according to several posts here in the list) to several other members. For example, who exactly gave the feedbacks for initial RIPE NCC Proposed New Charging Scheme 2012? The members-discuss list was pristine innocent about this "the current Charging Scheme model is complex and makes it difficult for individual members to easily determine their own fees" complains. Private conversations? Maybe... But it shouldn't in my opinion be private as soon as it relates to all the members! The new published EB email which enables another private channel between a person and the EB is a bad thing according to the logic of my sentences above. The main and the only "panel" for discussion should be either the members-discuss list or new "finance-discuss?" list, opened maybe only to members (I don't mind if it is completely opened). As stated by Nigel Titley, the Chairman of the Executive Board, at the GM the things are going to change to the next GM. The lack of discussions about the documents before GM-2011 was in my opinion related to usefulness and the source reasons in the documents. Speaking about the Activity Plan - we (members) asked the EB about adding cost to each activity in 2007-2008. Without the numbers the Activity Plan is a way of stating things, but not evaluating effectiveness of the services. Discuss "marked on stone" statements is not very rewarding venture. Thankfully the numbers will appear soon in the document. Second point in the matter - the procedure of changing the Activity Plan - it is not exist now and should be invented. There was already the suggestions about it in the list I won't going to repeat them now. Speaking about the Charging Scheme... I'm not against the increase of the amount to pay, I'm against of the misty motivations for the rise and some predictability of expenses. There should be clearly defined "resource classes" included in each membership category, and clearer definition of fairness. (I'd also decide on the consulting about the taxation issue, but it in unrelated thing up to now.) I can give many examples of that but I'm trying to make this message as short as possible. For example, I don't agree with the "free" IPv6: the LIRs would pay for the blocks indirectly, through IPv4 counting, anyway - whom we are going to trick then? The last thing which is the most important to me - the services of the RIPE NCC above the main baseline of "providing unique blocks of numbers and register them on the DB". It is related to the Activity Plan certainly, but I'd like to mention them from different point of view - in term of including some of them in the Charging Scheme. I'm repeating - I'm not against developed services "made in RIPE NCC", think that many of them (not all though) are very useful, but why some of them deserves to be mentioned in the Charging Scheme, the others - not? Why not related to the main activity things should be mentioned in invoices at all? I think of it like "tie in sale", not very pleasant thought of course. Regards, Vladislav Potapov Ru.iiat
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poty@iiat.ru