[anti-abuse-wg] RIPE Charter

Hi Ronald, 

May I propose to do a call and explain a bit about the community and the NCC roles ? And the WG's etc ? 

Regards,
Erik Bais 

Verstuurd vanaf mijn iPhone

> Op 11 aug. 2016 om 01:37 heeft Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg at tristatelogic.com> het volgende geschreven:
> 
> 
> You all already know that I'm no good at all at this whole brevity thing,
> but I'll try.
> 
> First I must thank Sander Steffann <sander at steffann.nl> for helping me
> to understand the rather confusing relationship between "RIPE" and 
> "RIPE NCC".  The latter has a formal legal charter, which I assume
> is a binding legal document under Dutch law.  The former (RIPE itself)
> is in contrast a rather informal amorphous (and egalitarian!) blob
> of participants which nicely bends over backwards to be inclusive,
> even to the extent of admitting into its club Americans of dubious
> repute, if not to say sanity, including even those who have never
> contributed a single guilder to the common enterprise.
> 
> But this still leaves me with the question:  To which entity do the
> various RIPE documents, and, in particular, ripe-001 apply?  To which
> entity are these documents "binding" legally or otherwise?  Either?
> Neither?
> 
> Are the documents ripe-001 and more generally, ripe-XXX merely informal
> statements of intent, or mission, which have binding legal effect only
> upon "RIPE" which does not itself even exist as a legal entity?  Is
> ripe-001 only an informal statement of original intent for RIPE, one
> which has now neither any legal enforcable force or effect upon either
> RIPE or RIPE NCC?
> 
> That would seem to be the case, legally speaking.  RIPE NCC has formal
> Articles of Association, and the ripe-001 document is not a part of that.
> Thus, in the unlikely event that there were to be found some apparent
> conflict between the RIPE NCC Articles of Association and, for example,
> the ripe-001 document, then the terms of the former would override and
> nullify any conflicting provision of the latter, correct?
> 
> Sorry.  I'm sure that most subscribers to this list don't have the least
> interest in exploring any of this legal fine print or mumbo jumbo.
> However I am persuaded that no progress can be made without reference
> to the fundamental documents and baseline intent of these associations,
> both formal (RIPE NCC) and informal (RIPE).  If general agreement can
> be reached on anything... a proposition that is itself still dubious
> at best... then it is only likely to be arrived at within the context
> of, and with all due respect for all those generally accepted agreements
> which have already and previously been achieved.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> rfg
>