[rpd] Appeal against softlanding-bis declaration of consensus

Thu Jan 11 19:16:54 UTC 2018

Heh, you know, I’ve been thinking

People keep claiming that Sander referred to a community of sheep – which – I don’t believe he said – and it’s mis-quoted and taken entirely out of context.

However – let me now say it –

I do not believe we are a community of sheep – because I see many many people who are actively saying “NO” to things that would hurt the interests of this continent.  At the same time – I see many people – who instead of fighting policy with fact – are arguing day in and day out that we SHOULD be a community of sheep – and fall in line behind those that quite frankly – may lead us off a cliff.

You want to know sheep – sheep are those who stand at the microphone at the PDP with little slips of paper and read them to say things about policies – but when called back to the microphone can’t explain what they themselves have just said – because they are just parroting whatever someone told them to say.   Sheep are those who come out and say +1 to this policy – but don’t actually know what’s in it – they are just following the herd and have not actually read through to understand the implications.  Sheep are people who cannot justify their support of the policy – other than to say “we support it”.  Sheep are people who CLAIM to be going to produce all sorts of evidence about how things are nonsensical by the following day – and never deliver on those promises.

Those are sheep – so are we a community of sheep? No – but we sure as hell have enough sheep to make me many nice woollen jackets to keep me warm in the dark cold days ahead when we get lead off a cliff by people who don’t have any concept about the industry in general.

Andrew

From: Owen DeLong [mailto:owen at delong.com]
Sent: 11 January 2018 21:55
To: Marcus K. G. Adomey <madomey at hotmail.com>
Cc: rpd <rpd at afrinic.net>
Subject: Re: [rpd] Appeal against softlanding-bis declaration of consensus

On Jan 10, 2018, at 10:05 , Marcus K. G. Adomey <madomey at hotmail.com<mailto:madomey at hotmail.com>> wrote:

Hi Owen,

> How many of the Africans calling out this difference have significant experience in the other regions? How can you accurately insist something is different when your perspective is limited to only the thing you are calling different with minimal knowledge or experience of the other?

Since you are questioning our intellectual ability to know that Africa has its own context different from the other continent reality, were you the one who advise our elders in this community to push for the creation of AfriNIC? What was your contribution toward the creation of the "VAPORWARE"?

I’m not questioning intellectual ability. I’m questioning your own statement of knowledge and experience. I’m asking you to back it up with facts which you still haven’t done.

ANSWER THESE TWO QUESTIONS, PLEASE.

certainly…

1. No, I was not involved in that. How does this relate to whether or not I now have experience in multiple communities over a decade later?

2. I had very little contribution to the creation of the “vaporware”. At the time, AfriNIC was, indeed, vaporware. It has since come to fruition. If you review the record of the time (over a decade ago) when I referred to AfriNIC as “vaporware”, you’ll see that the outcome of that discussion was for us to pass a policy that provided the needed relief for both Africa _AND_ for ARIN as the needs were actually similar in both geographic regions and the claim that Africa’s needs were different was, in fact, not accurate in that discussion. Note that at the end, Adiel and I came to an agreement to mutually support both proposals with the hope that the general proposal for all of ARIN would go forward and make Adiel’s proposal for just Africa within the ARIN region moot. That is, indeed what ended up happening as a result.

Through your questions you are apparently either showing ignorance on the matter of our community or not meticulous about getting the understanding of what is happening in our community.

I would argue that through your out of context quote of a single word from a collection of postings debating an ARIN policy proposal more than a decade ago, prior to my even becoming a member of the ARIN AC or attending my first AfriNIC meeting (Rabat, Morocco) that you are the one who is not being meticulous, or, attempting to mislead the other people reading these messages.

This could be attributed to the fact that you believe that visiting our community during AfriNIC PPM makes you an authority of our reality.

Not at all. I do believe that the combination of visiting PPMs, discussing matters with a wide variety of Africans, my experience working with providers and networks throughout Africa on various operational deployments within the region, active participation in the RPD list, discussions with AfriNIC staff, and my participation at ICANN on other matters makes me more knowledgeable of the reality in Africa than you want to admit.

Further, my statement was not intended to claim that I am any form of authority on the reality in Africa, but more to claim that your statement that I don’t understand the differences of reality in Africa as well as Africans was questionable at best. For you see, while I have a track record of active participation and at least some visibility in to the realities in multiple regions, I am questioning the level of perspective that you or any of the policy authors have on what is the reality in these other regions where they have no history of participation and no history of operational experience.

Honestly, I am more inclined to believe that you are rather mischievous because despite your claim of knowing our context you asked these two (2) questions doubting about our intellectual ability to know our context.

Again, I don’t doubt intellectual ability. I am well aware that there are many smart Africans, many smarter than me. However, I am questioning level of perspective, specifically yours.

You claim that the reality in the AfriNIC region is materially different and that is why this policy which appears to me to be bad for Africa is somehow good for Africa.

However, in order to know that A is different from B, one must first have knowledge of both A _AND_ B. I am questioning your level of perspective on B (other regions) vs. A, not because of your intellectual capacity, but because you have no history (that I know of) of operational experience or policy participation in other regions outside of AfriNIC.

The second question was intended to clarify that I was questioning perspective and operational experience, not intellectual capacity, but you apparently missed that.

This is exactly inline with Sander who send me an email telling me that we arecommunity of “SHEEP”. No wonder why you are fighting teeth and nail to push into our throat what you think is good for you. This is the typical behavior of a colonial master who has no regard for our reality.

Since that isn’t what Sander said and you, yourself have already admitted that you misquoted him (or more accurately, lest you accuse me of additional non-diligence, that you "mosquitoed him") him and are willing to do so again if that is what it takes to push your agenda, I think this statement should be disregarded at best.

Put an end to this because nobody in this community will go and misbehave in your PDP.

Anyone in this community who wishes to participate in the ARIN PDP is most welcome to do so and I encourage them to, including you. I do not encourage or support anyone misbehaving in any PDP and to the best of my knowledge, I have legitimately worked within the rules of the AfriNIC PDP here. If you believe I have misbehaved or violated some rule or code of conduct anywhere in this process, I challenge you to cite the specific incident and provide the details of what constitutes misbehavior. I will apologize in
advance, if any such thing has happened, but to the best of my knowledge, it has not. If it did happen, it certainly was not intentional.

FYI: One does not need to travel to all other RIR meetings to know what is happening there. All one needs is to subscribe or just read the archives of RPD lists of different RIR.

So on one hand, I’m not qualified because you believe my my subscription and participation in RPD lists and attendance at some meetings is insufficient to qualify me as knowledgeable, yet your mere subscription to another RIR’s mailing list is sufficient to make you a qualified expert? I’m very confused by this double standard. Can you
please clarify?

Owen

Marcus

________________________________
From: Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com<mailto:owen at delong.com>>
Sent: Thursday, January 4, 2018 7:17:56 PM
To: Marcus K. G. Adomey
Cc: mje at posix.co.za<mailto:mje at posix.co.za>; rpd; Ornella GANKPA
Subject: Re: [rpd] Appeal against softlanding-bis declaration of consensus

On Jan 4, 2018, at 07:21 , Marcus K. G. Adomey <madomey at hotmail.com<mailto:madomey at hotmail.com>> wrote:

Hi Mark Elkins,

I may agree with you that Sander and Owen have rich experience in policy matters in the context of their region.

I believe I have significant experience in policy matters in several regions, including AfriNIC, APNIC,
and ARIN as well as significant policy experience in LACNIC and some policy experience in RIPE.

What they have failed to understand is that African context is different from theirs. And this is the main reason why AfriNIC was created to adapt numbers resources allocation to African realities.

I fully understand that the African context is somewhat different. However, in many ways, it is not as different as many Africans would like us to believe. How many of the Africans calling out this difference have significant experience in the other regions? How can you accurately insist something is different when your perspective is limited to only the thing you are calling different with minimal knowledge or experience of the other?

So far, they failed to show how the process was not followed  and point out issues not addressed and which can impact  a large part of the African internet community. Like others, they keep expressing their feelings, thoughts  perceptions and speculations.

This isn’t true. Several of the issues not addressed are described in the appeal document. I’ve posted several specific issues that have not been addressed.

Fact: The proposal will prevent an ISP that needs more than a /18 from returning for additional space that they need for a period of up to 24 months.
Fact: The proposal in doing so is unfairly favorable to smaller organizations.
If you remove the 24 month moratorium on additional requests, then you are protecting those at the back of the line from hogs in front. But with the 24 month waiting period, instead of protecting those in line, you start protecting unnamed non-existent requests that may come in the future at the expense of existing providers with existing need.

RIPE and ARIN do adopt policies, but not based on full consensus. Policies discussions archives are available  for each region and attest this.

Sure, but we’ve never adopted a policy with so much opposition.

Owen

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/attachments/20180111/b1523571/attachment-0001.html>