Dear Jas
Thanks for your well-considered and valuable contributions. I note
that your mail has already sparked some really useful dialogue, but I
wanted to briefly clarify a few of the issues that have come up.
As Tim Jones noted in a previous reply, it's important to note the
distinction between voting items and consensus items in the APNIC
forums.
* Voting vs. consensus building
Voting
---------
The APNIC ByLaws define certain situations where formal voting can
occur, the most important being the Executive Council elections. It
has also been the convention to put major decisions affecting
membership rights (such as significant changes to the fee structure
or adoption of a new membership agreement) to a formal vote, although
this has generally followed a process of consensus building before
the election. When there is a formal vote, then the number of ballots
for each member is determined by their membership tier.
The ByLaws are here:
http://www.apnic.net/docs/corpdocs/Bylaws.htm
Consensus
----------
APNIC policy is generally considered a community issue rather than a
membership issue, so the policy development process is based on
consensus, which must be observed on both the mailing lists and in
meetings. Every interested person is welcome to take part, whether
they are a member or not. In this process, the voice of an individual
is equal to that of an Extra Large member.
The process for reaching consensus is summarised here:
http://www.apnic.net/docs/policy/dev/process.html
http://www.apnic.net/docs/policy/dev
* Other issues
Rejection of policy proposal
-----------------------------
In your first mail you noted:
Earlier in the week, one of the APNIC people did a thing
on improving dns service by what I calculate as 600%!! 2hrs
to 2 mins.. I also notice that that policy was rejected.
I just wanted to clarify that the proposal you mentioned is not
specifically about improving DNS service as such, but rather about
removing one method of updating the whois database for operational
and security reasons. The improvement in reverse DNS update times was
given as just one example of the potential benefits. Also, the
proposal was not actually rejected, but rather the decision was
deferred until after a working group has gathered more input and
provided more information about the issues. This proposal is still
alive and all further inputs to the sig-policy mailing list or
working group (when it is established) will be very welcome.
APNIC's hosting arrangement with ARIN
--------------------------------------
As an example of the need to evaluate the cost of *IR services, you
asked "Why does APNIC have one in the USA?".
Again, just for the sake of clarity, APNIC does have a small amount
of space in one of ARIN's rack under a co-operative agreement with
the RIRs. This does help efficiently distribute APNIC's services
(bearing in mind that APNIC's whois database is heavily queried from
around the world, including the US) and does not impose a significant
cost.
Once again thanks for your comments to the list - active discussions
like this are always welcome.
Finally, thank you for your compliments about the quality of the web
cast. We having working hard to improve access to the APNIC meetings
and so it is really good to see those services prompting more
discussion.
Kind regards
Save
_______________________________________________________________________
Savenaca Vocea email: save@apnic.net
Policy Development Manager, APNIC sip: save@voip.apnic.net
http://www.apnic.net phone: +61 7 3858 3100
On 15/09/2006, at 3:46 PM, Jas Webb wrote:
Hi Tim,
Great discussion you have started, possibly one that
is long overdue.
Thanks..
My guess is about 5 years overdue. ;-)
In regards to voting though, I am pretty certain
(can't find the info on APNIC website to confirm)
that the extra votes for Large, Extra Large members
etc. only come into play for things like elections
of EC members.
When it comes to voting on policy changes, every
member gets one vote, so you can definitely make a
change.
well.. fees and EC members.. Isn't that the most
important? and should be the most fair? Setting aside
cultural differences of the term "fair".
So when the votes are distributed as they are now -
the final result is not going to be one of the
community/membership, but a result of the largest
network operators.
Perhaps in APNIC's early days, this was desired.. Like
start-up companies stacking their board and knowing
the results of shareholder meetings before the meeting
takes place. But is it required now?
-Jas
--
Jas Webb