PRE-ANNOUNCEMENT: BIND-Members Forum

[Paul A Vixie]

> Fee based? Risks creating a 'them and us' impression. I also feel it
> dents the credability of the scheme. It's almost "give us cash or 
> else...". Further, there are many, many ccTLD operators who don't have
> any money to speak of. Seriously. Many don't charge their clients and so
> have no income. Paying anything other than a nominal fee would be quite
> difficult for such organisations.

presumably these would be not-for-profits or close enough to that status
that they could and would ask that their membership fee be waived.  but
as TLD server operators they are potentially very important parts of the
internet's infrastructure, which isc is more or less "sworn to protect."

> If fees are levied, please have the constituent parts of the fee 
> clearly broken down and publicly available so that it can be shown to be
> for legimate cost recovery only.

that's almost certainly the way it will be done.  isc is not-for-profit.

however, while i am willing to volunteer some of my time to chair the board
and talk to the press, the lawyers and sysadmins and release engineers isc
needs working on its behalf are not universally able to do the same.  (note
that the actual _development_ is underwritten by contracts, as with bind9,
or back when it was first created, with bind8.)

> Most ccTLDs are served to some degree by servers not administered by
> the TLD registry itself. They may be run by a commercial ISP or some
> community-minded organisation such as RIPE. I would hope that the scheme
> would allow for these other bodies who are not TLD registries
> themselves but run TLD servers to be notified. The NDA should take this
> into account. If the ISC doesn't want to deal directly with third
> parties perhaps the TLD operators could act as a middle-man.

we're still puzzling over that part.  but i agree, it's an important part
of the process.

> Either way any given TLD cannot be considered protected until all its
> servers are upgraded - no matter who runs the servers.

of course.

> Accepting members based on discretion could easily be used to further
> the 'them and us' position.

yes.  this isn't a democracy.  if there were, for example, a group of
people who did their own linux or bsd distributions but who isc thought
were too immature to be trusted to follow an NDA, then isc can just say
"no."  on the other hand, CERT isn't a system vendor or root/tld server
operator but isc naturally wants CERT to to be part of the bind-members
forum and so they would be invited.  and so on.  discretion is important.
it's what separates humanity from other animals.

> The scheme would be tarnished by looking like a private club for some
> kind of elite. Membership should be based on clear, simple criteria. If
> the criteria disbarr membership of some organisation then the criteria
> should be changed -- there should be no discretion involved. You'll just
> be accused of using it improperly.

isc is already used to being accused of this, that, and the other thing.
the important thing is, isc is doing what its board of directors believes
in, and entities who want to do it with us are being invited, by this
process, to make their desires known.