An update on the AfriNIC situation

Wed Sep 1 19:44:21 UTC 2021

> On Sep 1, 2021, at 04:48 , Mark Tinka <mark at tinka.africa> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 9/1/21 00:56, Owen DeLong via NANOG wrote:
> 
>> Not to put too fine a point on this, but what human cost?
>> 
>> There were exactly 3 employees that AFRINIC wasn’t able to pay in July, including
>> the CEO (who is one of the major protagonists in creating this problem in the first
>> place). I don’t know who the other two were.
>> 
>> Everyone else got paid for July.
>> 
>> AFRINIC has received clearance of enough money to cover their normal expenses
>> for August and September. As such, there shouldn’t be any problems with salaries
>> or “human cost” in those months. Hopefully given that reprieve, cooler heads at
>> AFRINIC can prevail and some form of settlement can be achieved before they run
>> out of money from that reprieve.
> 
> This is rich!
> 
> Of course, one should expect people to be mentally settled and do good work when they have no security or clarity about whether they will get paid at the end of each month.
> 
> These aren't robots, mate. People have real thoughts and real feelings.
> 
> Stress is not intangible... it releases cortisol, which delivers a number of physiological side effects that work against good health. Financial insecurity is just about the worst stress anyone has to deal with.
> 
> None of us would sleep well if we knew that our source of income is not guaranteed, despite what some may say about "As such, there shouldn't be any problems with salaries..."
> 
> Mark.

Well… I don’t see you calling out the stress and cortisol actions for the various staff and customers of Cloud Innovation or Larus in your postings when AFRINIC first issued an existential threat to their business based on made-up policies that don’t actually exist.

As such, I’d argue that AFRINIC attacked a much larger population first. The fact that (at least so far), AFRINIC’s attacks have been less successful than Cloud Innovation’s counter-attacks doesn’t change the fact that if you want to call it out that way, there’s a greater human cost on the other side.

Owen