Neil J. McRae wrote:

Agreed on the "spirit" of what you have to say. I also think that there would need to a mention of something that states that this should be done within the limits of the law in Holland. Perhaps also consider immediate to by end of 2003 to give time to hand over some projects to other bodies/parties that might be interested in them.

OK, based on your and other comments, I agree that the word "immediate" is inappropriate in (a). Some time scale should be included, else we will end up in a place where "tomorrow" is the timescale. "as soon as practical within the constraints of acceptable practise and law" perhaps ?

I think the most disappointing aspect of this situation is that the RIPE NCC management team and board aren't leading this discussion and that they themselves have not yet realised that the situation as it stands is not fair to those members who only want registration services.

Amen. Peter

...

There are activities of the NCC that can be discussed if they are to be considered relevant or not. However, what current activities of the RIPE NCC do you feel that are not "necessary to the continued well being of the Internet"?

an interesting question, to which i have no answer. i would note the contrast between the four current rirs, with arin being very bare-bones address allocation, lacnic adding more educational outreach as they perceive a need in their region, apnic which does more infrastructure and more outreach work, and ripe/ncc which has major branches into representing isps in policy fora, doing r&d, etc.

This is a very important observation, and I guess at the end what the debate is all about. The problem is also though that the "landscape" in the regions are very different. Traditionally RIPE have for example also to some extent played the role of NANOG, as the only alternative would have been something like EuroISPA. EuroISPA on the other hand is far more towards a lobbying organization, and very little into operational details. In the APNIC region there is also the APRICOT meetings. In the RIPE region, the natural co-operation point have been RIPE. When at KQ we attended the RIPE meetings as mush for meeting customers, solve various inter-provider problems, and also participate in the WG activities. What might be worth considering is to arrange the meetings in a more "US like manner" with the ARIN/NANOG split but with the meetings back-to-back. That would make it easier for people who only want to go to some of the current WGs.

my issue is with ripe/ncc (and apnic) forgetting that the internet is a cooperative venture, making war with icann (with whom folk know i have major doubts, and towards which my comment on lawers and politicans replacing a part-time computer scientist were directed (some years ago)), naively aligning with the itu (apnic has joined the itu), and non-cooperation with the ietf. it is how these policies are made and decided in back rooms that tip me over the edge. it is not my enemies who make me most frustrated, it is my friends.

Hopefully we are changing this. But I do think part of the problem have been the lack of interest from the community in the past. - kurtis -