https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-documents/other-documents/ripe-n...
Please review this document. If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, please send them to this list or to me directly before 31 May 2023.
Whilst I'm happy with the document in general and especially with its clarity and brevity I'd like to sound a note of caution. NCC staff are, as rightly noted, members of the community and have a right to contribute to its work. However they are in a slightly favoured position in that their management is fully aware of the community and are willing to allow them the time to contribute. This is not the case for many members of the community who may find it difficult to persuade their employer to allow the time for them to fully participate (our esteemed HPH, for example, had to take annual leave to participate as RIPE Chair). This has the potential to skew the ability to contribute and over time could result in RIPE NCC staff being over represented in working groups and the like. We've actually seen this in working groups where the NCC has provided, for example, minute taking resources. Now whereas this is a fine thing and relieves the WG Chair of the thankless task of browbeating someone to produce a set of minutes it does, doubtless, reduce the feeling of the WG being a truly community thing. None of this should be interpreted as an attack in any way on RIPE NCC staff who generally do a fine job of decoupling their RIPE NCC and their RIPE hats. Or am I just an Old Internet Fart (TM)? (Note that I'm not campaigning for the return of overhead transparencies). Nigel