Re: RARE and RIPE - corrections

[Hank Nussbacher <]

On Wed, 16 Sep 92 15:43:55 +0200 you said:
>Fundraising for the RIPE NCC is handled by the treasurer of RARE (Paul Van
>Binst). A RARE CoA decision says that the treasurer should do this together
>with the chairman of RIPE. However, despite several tries from the RIPE
>chairman, this has never been the case.
>
>I do know (as we all do) that the RARE member organisations were asked to
>take care of the funding of the RIPE NCC. This has resulted in the current
>situation where the RARE Full National Members, together with EARN, Israel
>and EUnet fund the first 12 months of operation of the RIPE NCC. We are all
>grateful for that. It is worthwhile noting that the single largest
>contribution is provided by EARN.

As the person who made a strong recommendation to the EARN Executive to fund
the Ripe NCC as well as to convince Israel to fund the RIPE NCC I would like
to make a few comments.  My rule of thumb has always been "Pay for something
you need and if it is free - don't expect it to be so good".

I have seen countless free services in the network come and go and users
always suffer when they disappear.  Unless there is a financial commitment
from the start to support a service, it cannot be viewed as reliable nor
can you build on it being there next year.  The RIPE database as well as the
other services the RIPE NCC provide are indeed valuable.  If you agree with
the previous statement, one should be prepared to pay for such services.
Anyone who has read the RIPE NCC quarterly postscript report can easily see
that the quality of that one document (both in style, content and readability)
far exceed anything EARN and RARE have so far produced.

I view the E-bone the same way.  Motivated people invested a lot of their
time and in a very short period of time, established a backbone that all the
EC dignitaries were unable to create with far larger budgets and manpower.
To those readers who agree with what has been said, it is up to you to
convince your managements that the E-bone and RIPE NCC is something that
should be supported (financially).  The alternative will be that they will
cease to exist and you will be left with something called an OU - that many
of you are quite apprehensive about.

So what should you do?  Make sure your organization/network has a budget
item in 1993 both for E-bone and RIPE NCC.  Write letters to your management
requesting financial support for these two organizations and explain in
clear, well thought out reasoning why it is necessary.

We all know what the alternative is - all you have to do is open today's
newspapers to find out.

Hank Nussbacher