[ripe-chair-discuss] Chair nomination process

Hi all,

Sasha more than adequately explained why it's reasonable that people might have paid attention to the development of this process, been sufficiently satisfied with the result not to comment on it, but now feel compelled to speak up. Things have changed since the process was developed, it's reasonable that opinions on it have too.

There's something else at play here too though. Nick captured it in the message at the top of this thread "it looks troubling from the point of view of governance practices". 

It feels like the deeper issue here is not so much about the chair selection process as it is the grey area of where the separation between RIPE Community and RIPE NCC lies. Given that the latter was created in part to service the former it's easy (for me at least) to think of that as a client / vendor relationship and expect that the behaviour we'd see elsewhere between public organizations in that sort of relationship would automatically apply.

It's understandable that pinning that down wasn't covered in the development of this process, but it's not unreasonable that for some the execution of this process has drawn inconvenient attention to it. We're trying to execute what is described as RIPEs most formal ever process on the shaky foundation of a doggedly informal relationship between RIPE and RIPE NCC. It's an oft repeated mantra that RIPE doesn't _do_ formal, I think that the current situation might have been avoided, or at least the ensuing discussion better guided by a formal description of this relationship.

As to the matter at hand.. I'm wary of proceeding with the current process as at this point it seems that the nomcom may feel pressure to preclude a candidate, or that if successful that candidate may be seen as illegitimate by a portion of the community. Nobody wants to drag this process out, but I don't think it's fair to the nomcom and the candidates to press on regardless of the uncertainty in the air.

I don't have strong opinions on how far the dial should turn in either direction in regard to the intermingling of RIPE and RIPE NCC, I think I'm pretty happy with the status quo. I do think however that having that status quo formally described would be helpful here.

dave