[Cryptech Core] admin update

Leif Johansson leifj at sunet.se
Sun Jan 12 15:43:19 UTC 2014


Folks,

Here is a short summary of what I've done and where we are wrt finding a
financial home for the project.

After our meeting in Stockholm I started investigating SUNET as an
option for admin home. Unfortunately it pretty soon turned out that this
wasn't going to work. SUNET is part of a Swedish govt agency which is
stuck with some pretty bad bureaucracy. To make a long story short: its
relatively easy for SUNET to spend money but not very easy to collect
money from grants.

Instead I started looking at using OpenDNSSEC AB as had been mentioned
as an option. Unfortunately that option didn't pan out either. Basically
there are accounting problems involved for .SE (who owns OpenDNSSEC AB)
that make it impossible for that company to be used.

My current option is to use NORDUNet A/S. The CFO is looking into the
tax and legal aspects and so far there have been no red-flags. The model
would be that SUNET as one of the owners of NORDUNet would be the
responsible owner of the project and NORDUNet would provide all
financial and contractual services for cryptech.

A few words about NORDUNet (sometimes abbreviated as NDN): NDN is a
privately held company jointly owned by the research agencies in the 5
nordic countries. NDN has been "doing the Internet thing" for as long as
there has been an Internet". For instance NDN was given custody of the
first root server outside the US: nic.nordu.net which then became i-root
under an agreement with autonomica and currently netnod.se.

There are several upsides of this arrangement if we can pull it off:

- NDN already hosts other projects for its owners including EU FP7-projects
- NDN is committed to OpenSource and transparency
- SUNET has an owning stake in NDN
- SUNET CEO sits on the board of NDN which allow for full control over
the financial/admin process

I will keep you all updated as things progress.

        Best R
        Leif Johansson




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