21 Jul
2019
21 Jul
'19
7:11 p.m.
On 7/21/19 10:06 AM, Brian Kantor via 44Net wrote:
I think many of your questions would be answered if
you read the
article I wrote on the subject at <https://www.ampr.org/amprnet>.
But one point that I want to make even more strongly is that there
is NO plan to sell any more of the AMPRNet address space now or at
any time in the future.
Funny, in 2014 you mentioned to me, in person, you would never permit selling
of the space. Even leasing it long term was out of the question as it was in
trust for amateur radio, ARDC was a custodian of it.
Please note that we discussed this matter for many
many months
before moving ahead.
Where? There was no discussion with the community of users.
We think it is for the best.
This is part and parcel in how the unelected board operates; aloof and
condescending to the users.
And none of us gets any reward for any of this except
for the feeling
of having done the right and proper thing. We each of us have
received a number of thanks and congratulations, along with a lot
of vitriol, hate, and threats from small-minded hotheads.
So the board will never take a salary?
We all apologize for the secrecy, but it was forced
upon us in order
to participate in the IP address global marketplace. That is not
an open arena, and likely never will be. And that is not our doing.
Large corporations and governments, those who are the only possible
buyers of the required magnitude, do not conduct their business
details in public.
There's a disconnect here. Two decisions were made, one to sell a community
resource, the other is who to sell it to. The decision to sell needed to be
done in the open with the community. You can negotiate in secret and then be
open about the buyer and the sales price when it closes. We held the address
space, and set the terms.
Nothing said it _had_ to be sold.
With more than 50 million dollars that now must be
spent on promoting
amateur radio by supporting those that make ham radio what it is
and what it can be, we believe that the address space now converted
to funds will do more good for more hams and the future of amateur
radio than any unused idle addresses held for an unlikely future
use could possibly do.
Part of discussion of the sale with the community would be laying out exactly
how this foundation will work. ARDC is unsuitable to do this as it's
structured. The community will have no voice and continues to have no voice.
Board members who are friends and colleagues of yours get appointed and
elected with no input from the community.
ARDC should have setup a proper foundation to handle this endowment, separate
from the ARDC board and answerable to the community. Their business should be
conducted in the open and transparent to the community. The users could have
received clear benefits from this sale in normalization of services, SWIP,
RDNS, and maybe even RPKI. We'd have the best of both worlds, a strong single
purpose organization to give grants and maintain the endowment, and another
for the stewardship and technical support of the address space.
ARDC bungled this, both from the organizational and technical aspects. RDNS
is still broken for several users on /16 boundaries, and was broke for
everyone else 20+ hours on the day it closed.
In the near future, we expect to invite interested
groups (and
later, when we have the clerical support to handle the paperwork,
individuals) to apply for funding to support their projects, whether
they be fundamental research, scholarships for education, design of
new algorithms or technology, or the construction of Amateur
facilities. The granting committee is being formed as we speak,
and we will publish a document on how to qualify for funding as
soon as we can -- it is being written now.
ARDC is unsuited for this. ARDC has a poor (non-existent) track record of
supporting FOSS, is not engaged in the community, and the board has shocking
conflicts of interest.
--
Bryan Fields
727-409-1194 - Voice
http://bryanfields.net