[rpd] Appeal against softlanding-bis declaration of consensus

[Omo Oaiya]

On 3 January 2018 at 10:21, Sander Steffann <sander at steffann.nl> wrote:

> Hello rpd and appeals committee,
>
> I am also one of the contributors to the memorandum sent by Andrew and I
> fully support its contents. While my personal opinions about the policy
> proposal are not as strong as those of other opposers, I do recognise that
> their objections have not been addressed and that therefore there can be no
> consensus on this proposal.
>
> Building community-wide consensus, or acknowledging that there is no
> consensus and withdrawing, are the cornerstones of our policy development
> process. Violations of that process are a serious danger to the community.
> Therefore I support this appeal.
>
> Sincerely,
> Sander Steffann
>
>
The real danger to the community in my view is cohorts who seek to impose
their wishes on the AfriNIC community by abusing loopholes in the process
in the guise of upholding its tenets.

My reasons for responding to this thread:

#1 - I am explicitly named in the appeal as refusing to enter into
discussions on competing proposals.
#2 - Reference is also made to a Skype conversation with the SL-BIS authors
in the appeal document

1)    Some background history behind AFPUB-2016-V4-001
>
> Shortly after AFPUB-2016-V4-001 came out – a second proposal was put to
> the floor to repeal the current (and now active) soft landing proposal.
> This was done after attempts to communicate with the authors of
> AFPUB-2016-V4-001 around the policy directly failed (sadly these
> communications were on Skype and the logs are long gone – so since this
> cannot be proven, it is submitted merely as unsubstantiated background,
> however the publication of the second policy is well documented fact)
>
>
>
Well, can I provide substantiated background?  I have these Skype logs.
What they show is that violations of AfriNIC processes may have been going
on for some time and not always for community interest.

On 10th Feb 2016, shortly after the Softlanding-BIS proposal was announced
on the list, Mr Alston contacted me on Skype to reach what he termed an
"amicable agreement”.  He advised that we needed to negotiate otherwise he
would post a counterproposal which had 8 authors on the lists and
claimed that neither would pass as it was very easy to block consensus on
policies.

The rest is in the archives.  We have since seen the various attempts to
make good on this threat to block consensus on SL-BIS.   The proposal ended
up being unnecessarily contentious despite its aim for the best interests
of the whole community.   Failing to block consensus on the policy, the
process which had served well up till now has become the new AfriNIC
structure to assault.

I had considered these logs private but as Mr Alston cites them in his
appeal, I am happy to produce.

Best wishes
Omo Oaiya
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