On Wednesday, Aug 20, 2003, at 17:40 Europe/Amsterdam, Peter Galbavy wrote:
Kurt Erik Lindqvist wrote:
Are you also saying that having to have the AGM vote is a problem? In that case how would you else want to do it? Voting anytime through out the year if enough people called for a vote? That would make it more or less impossible to make or follow a budget in any reasonable way.
I do not believe that the use of the AGM is appropriate for the "big switch" being used to approve a proposed budget that included 100% of projects. The budget needs approval, but it appears to much "yes or no".
When you set up an association in any country, there are laws that tell you about things like statutes that regulate the operation of the association. There are also some constraints on what can and can't be in those statutes. In the case of the RIPE NCC the applicable law is the Dutch one. As part of defining proxy voting in the statutes, to address the issue of requiring personal attendance to the best it could be done at the time, it was a requirement that the agenda points of the AGM be published well in advance so that people considering using a proxy for voting could know what they were voting for. As a consequence, yes, the activity plan needs to be accepted or rejected as a whole. The articles of association are at http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/articles-association.html. It even includes an article on how to change the document itself. As times change, changes may be necessary, but honestly, I don't think assuming bad will from anyone's side is fair or true. Yes, like many long running organisations, things may settle into auto-pilot or even drift away from the intended purpose, but then it is the community's part in this whole thing to nudge it back into track.
There is no consultation - formal, bot mailing list chatter - on what projects are approved for inclusion into said budget approval.
Maybe, but the activity plan is always publish well in advance and since it is not approved until the AGM, the time in between publishing and approval (or rejection) is the time to make changes to it. Joao