[ripe-list] Discussion on financial support for RIPE Chair

Alexander Isavnin wrote:
> 
> Support Option 2.
> 
> Option 1 could move RIPE Community to uncomfortable lands of formalized organization, with unspecific for responsibilities Community 
> 
> Option 3 might cause conflicts of interests, making RIPE Chair dependent on a bad will of NCC's board or management.

Before leaping to conclusions, it might be worth kicking around ideas
for how the risks identified in Option 3 might be mitigated.

I agree think the risk of loss of independence is a valid concern we
should be wary about. I wouldn't agree with someone who was casually
dismissive of this as an issue. But Option 3 doesn't *have* to be "the
RIPE Chair is employed at will by, and under the direct instructions of,
the NCC". With care and thought, I am confident we can do better than that.

The main reason why the RIPE Community cannot employ its own Chair is
that the Community does not exist as a legal person and so cannot form a
contract, either with the Chair or the NCC. However, the Chair *will* be
a legal person, and can form (and would) have a contract with the NCC.

The terms of this contract could in principle be designed to protect his
independence from the NCC, and accountability to the RIPE community. The
Chair will himself have an interest defending those terms.

For example, perhaps the contract could provide that it may not be
terminated by the NCC unless and until some RIPE community process has
removed the person as Chair [*]. That might still require us to be a bit
more clear what the process in the RIPE community for removal of the
Chair should be, but it moves the locus of work to be done back into the
community.


[*] There may be legal quibbles e.g. "you can't have a commitment to
employ someone for an infinite period", but there can be workarounds:
make it a fixed term contract of (say) fifty years, which could be
terminated early but only under the following conditions...[by the Chair
himself, by the RIPE community].

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