« Google Maps is a social network » says Pritvi. With features like posting reviews, following other local guides, earning points, liking & sharing other people's reviews, indeed Maps is a social network.

After DevFest 2022, I started contributing to Google Maps more often, starting with a few missing places in my village, Providence.

Living in Providence, it is very common to hear that « lin alle acheter gato kot Aziz » or « mo p alle zuer lotto kot Samy » and yet these two places were not on Google Maps.

Then, I added village temples that were missing, like the Kalimaye (a Hindu shrine dedicated to Mother Kali). There are four such shrines in Providence, that I know of and I added three of them to Maps. While doing do I noticed a road was not named and it is the Kalimaye Road itself.

I followed the Google Local Guides Help to add the « missing » road but to my surprise, I could not. After I submitted the details about the road, Maps said, "We cannot fix issues in this region yet."

I tweeted about it and tagged @googlemaps.

Within an hour, @googlemaps replied the tweet, asking me to follow them so that they can DM me to help.

Thus, I followed @googlemaps and they sent me a DM asking the coordinates for the the missing road. I replied with those details including pictures of the road sign and surroundings.

A few days later, Kalimaye Rd appeared on Google Maps. 😊

The first question addresses the origin of the litigation. AFRINIC uses an example whereby a permit is given to a company to build a hotel in Africa on a plot of land. Later on, it is found that a shopping centre has been built there and not a hotel as per the initial terms agreed. With this analogy, AFRINIC attempts to explain that Cloud Innovation Ltd is not using the allocated blocks of IPv4 addresses as per the initial need that CIL specified when requesting those resources.

Due to the scarcity of IPv4 addresses, AFRINIC community passed an IPv4 Soft-Landing policy in 2011. The policy came in force on 31 March 2017 and it entered Phase 1. On 13 January 2020, AFRINIC announced that Phase 2 of IPv4 Exhaustion has begun. Thus, IPv4 number resources allocation is done strictly on a needs basis.

AFRINIC states that it informed Cloud Innovation Ltd of the breach of their agreement in June 2020. It asked CIL to explain and remedy it. However, since there was no remedial action taken, in March 2021 AFRINIC started the procedure of reclaiming the IPv4 resources from CIL. The latter initiated legal proceedings.

The page contains a timeline of events as they happened.

Interestingly, the timeline stops at 14 January 2022, when the appeal of Cloud Innovation Ltd against a previous judgment was dismissed with costs. The timeline does not include the recent lawsuits.

The second question takes us down the history lane. AFRINIC explains how the internet began, the role of the IETF, IANA and the establishment of the five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) — APNIC, ARIN, RIPE NCC, LACNIC and AFRINIC.

AFRINIC states that just like the other four RIRs, it has provisions to determine how IP number resources allocated to Resource Members are used. It also reaffirms its dedication to the African community.

The third question relates to the procedures that AFRINIC adopts to validate members and their requests for number resources.

The fourth and last question is about the change of usage of IP resources. That is, what should a Resource Member do if the latter needs to use the IP resources for a purpose other than what was stated in the initial request.

At the time of writing this post, Cloud Innovation Ltd has five press releases published on its website — including letters, documents and Supreme Court rulings. The press release of 14 July 2021 contains a timeline of events and how Cloud Innovation Ltd responded to AFRINIC.

In the article, the Management of Cloud Innovation Ltd, alleges that some former senior members of AFRINIC staff have used Le Défi to fight against Cloud Innovation Ltd. The latter alleges that AFRINIC has demanded Cloud Innovation to monitor hundreds of millions of end users and threatened to terminate internet connectivity of those end users if refused.

The article mentions Lu Heng, the CEO of Cloud Innovation Ltd, as a global citizen having residency permits in countries in Europe, Middle East and Asia. Lu Heng is mentioned as occupying board seats in a number of non-profit global organisations – citing The Pacific Telecommunications Council.

AFRINIC Communique

AFRINIC published a communique on its website in which it explained that Cloud Innovation Ltd has been been allocated 6.2 million IPv4 addresses by AFRINIC following needs expressed for the region. It further states that the use of the IP addresses is governed by a Registration Service Agreement (RSA) signed by Cloud Innovation Ltd.

In June 2020, AFRINIC drew the attention of Cloud Innovation Ltd to breaches of its RSA and asked for explanation, failing which, AFRINIC initiated contractual procedures stipulated in the RSA.

The communique states that instead of collaborating, Cloud Innovation Ltd chose to initiate legal proceedings against AFRINIC and till date Lu Heng and his associates have entered over 25 lawsuits against AFRINIC before the Supreme Court of Mauritius.

The communique was issued as a result of the article published in Le Défi newspaper on 5 August 2022.

The AFRINIC communique was also published in French on page 7 of the l'express dimanche newspaper.

Observation

I could not verify the article that Cloud Innovation referred to, that had statements from former senior members of AFRINIC staff. There was no reference to the article date or link online in its « right to reply » published on defimedia.info. In fact, Cloud Innovation mentions that the article has been removed by Le Défi.

I could not find Lu Heng on the Board of Governors of the Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC). He is currently a For-Profit Representative in the Advisory Council of the PTC. He was elected in November 2020 for the East Asian For-Profit seat. His term on the Advisory Council started on 17 January 2021 and is valid for 4 years as per Article VI Section 3A of the Bylaws of the Pacific Telecommunications Council. Lu Heng appears on the Advisory Council of the PTC as the CEO of Larus Ltd.

AFRINIC states breaches of its RSA as the reason for reclaiming IPv4 numbers from Cloud Innovation Ltd. The latter accuses AFRINIC of corruption and poor governance. It also claims that AFRINIC has demanded that it monitors hundreds of millions of its end users.

• ZeroSSL CA (default)
• Letsencrypt.org CA
• BuyPass.com CA
• SSL.com CA
• Google.com Public CA
• Pebble strict Mode
• Any other RFC8555-compliant CA

ZeroSSL is the default CA.

In order to request a Let's Encrypt certificate, one can pass the --server letsencrypt directive to change the CA. The default CA can also be changed by issuing:

acme.sh --set-default-ca --server letsencrypt

Let's Encrypt has IPv6 support. However, you can pass --listen-v4 or --listen-v6 to specify whether to use IPv4 or IPv6 to listen.

acme.sh --server letsencrypt --issue --listen-v4 -d sysadmin-journal.com -w /srv/www/sysadmin-journal.com

The above command lets you request a certificate through the Let's Encrypt CA, using the webroot method. In this method, a verification file is created in the webroot path, inside the /.well-know/acme-challenge directory.

Once verification is complete, the file is removed and the certificate, the intermediary certificate and the key are deposited at /etc/letsencrypt/domain_name.

Installation

git clone https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh.git
cd acme.sh

./acme.sh --install -m name@email.com

The above will create the .acme.sh directory in your home directory. Hence, the script will be available as ~./acme.sh/acme.sh. Else, you could also simply clone the project in the /opt directory and create a symlink to the script /usr/local/bin.

The Baie Jacotet SCLS is where the South Africa Far East (SAFE) submarine cable lands in Mauritius.

The days that followed, several more revelations were made.

P. K. Jugnauth himself revealed that he asked the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, to send a technical team from India to carry out a survey at the landing station. At no point does Jugnauth give details on the nature of the survey or the precise reason that required a survey at the landing station. He only cites "national security" to hide away from questions.

Jugnauth also confirmed that Singh had refused to give access to the landing station, hence he phoned him. Later Singh allowed access.

Singh made further revelations in subsequent interviews, thereby stating that a three-member technical team was accompanied to the Baie Jacotet SCLS by the Chief Technical Officer of Mauritius Telecom, Girish Guddoy on 15 April 2022. The Indian technicians attempted to capture data from the SAFE consortium equipment which is provided by Alcatel Submarine Networks. They failed to do so twice. Thus, they captured data on eleven links of Mauritius Telecom instead. As per Singh, the Indian technicians in a meeting in his office on 14 April 2022 had informed that they intend to capture a 2 mins internet traffic data from the SAFE cable.

The allegation of allowing a foreign state to sniff internet traffic in Mauritius has been refuted by the Prime Minister.

Today, Subramanian Moonesamy, who is well reputed in the internet community, sent an email to the Data Protection Office citing the 36th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners.

S. Moonesamy mentioned that one of the results of the conference was a resolution of Big Data that states —

To be transparent about which data is collected, how the data is processed, for which
purposes it will be used and whether or not the data will be distributed to third 
parties.

The conference was hosted by Mauritius in 2014.

S. Moonesamy stated in the email that several newspapers in Mauritius have featured a data capture at the Baie Jacotet cable landing station. He asked the Data Protection Office whether the 2014 Resolution is relevant to the data capture at Baie Jacotet.

Who is Subramanian Moonesamy?

S. Moonesamy is a Cryptographic Officer of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. He is a Trusted Community Representative of the DNS technical community. He is involved in the DNSSEC key signing process of the root zone.

He has drafted internet standards for the Internet Engineering Task Force. He is currently Board Director for AFRINIC for Seat 3 – Indian Ocean.

I quote from the report —

In 2021, International Bandwidth usage increased to 211,312 Megabits per second (Mbits/s) from 144,973 in 2020.

That number is not fixed because internet traffic changes all time, every day, every second. However, we can use it to base our calculation.

Let's first convert the number into Megabytes, which is understood by many. To do so, we divide the number by 8, because 1 byte = 8 bits. Thus, 211,312 Megabits is equivalent to 26,414 Megabytes.

Let's make it even more readable by converting it to Gigabytes. To do that we divide 26,414 by 1024. We get 25.7 Gigabytes or let's simply round it up to 26 Gigabytes.

Now, that's approximately the amount of information that flows through the internet cable every second. If we have store the information that is transferred during 2 mins, it'll be 120 seconds multiplied by 26 Gigabytes, which results to 3,120 Gigabytes.

Result — 3.12 Terabytes

Disclaimer

The purpose of this blog post is to make computing fun and help people research on such topics. It is not to hurt anyone's sentiments.

If my calculation is wrong, please ping me on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

The email contained two attachments;

• a letter sent to the African Telecommunications Union (ATU), signed by Eddy Kayihura, and
• a letter by the ATU in response to E. Kayihura's request, signed by John Omo, the Secretary General of the African Telecommunications Union.

The subscriber also copied the email to the global RIR community.

Context

Recent lawsuits against AFRINIC by Africa on Cloud (Pty) Ltd and Crystal Web (Pty) Ltd have caused the AFRINIC Board of Directors to be incapable of holding any meetings and make any decisions. Thus, causing an impediment to the organisation's proper functioning.

During the AFRINIC Annual General Members Meeting (AGMM) on the 3rd June 2022, the Board Election could not be carried out either because of a court order prohibiting the same. Eddy Kayihura sent an email to Resource Members on 16 May 2022 informing that AFRINIC was served an Interim Order of the Supreme Court of Mauritius on that same afternoon. The Order prohibited AFRINIC from proceeding further with the election of its Board.

Companies Act of Mauritius

Section 136 of the Companies Act 2001 of Mauritius stipulates —

136. Court may appoint directors
     
     (1) Where –
         (a) there are no directors of a company, or the number of directors 
             is less than the quorum required for a meeting of the Board; and
         (b) it is not possible or practicable to appoint directors in 
             accordance with the company’s constitution or under section 
             140(3),
             
a shareholder or creditor of the company may apply to the Court to appoint 
one or more persons as directors of the company, and the Court may make an
appointment if it considers that it is in the interests of the company to do 
so.

     (2)  An appointment shall be made on such terms and conditions as the 
          Court thinks fit.

In the letter to the African Telecommunications Union, Eddy Kayihura explained that a string of litigation, initiated by a handful of Resource Members, has temporarily deprived AFRINIC of a quorum at the level of its Board of Directors.

Eddy further mentions that he is writing the letter in the capacity of a Resource Member of AFRINIC and that he intends to apply to the Supreme Court of Mauritius to appoint directors of AFRINIC. He then requests the Secretary General of the ATU, to assist him by providing a list of four or more persons who would be willing to act as director on the Board of AFRINIC (should the Supreme Court of Mauritius direct so).

John Omo, the Secretary General of the ATU, responded with a list of four persons from Mauritius, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Kenya.

• Melkbosstrand, South Africa
• Mtunzini, South Africa
• Saint Paul, Réunion
• Baie Jacotet, Mauritius
• Cochin, India
• Penang, Malaysia

The SAFE cable is owned by a consortium of network operators. The operators are AT&T, Angola Telecom, BICS, Camtel, China Telecom, Chunghwa Telecom, Ghana Telecommunications Company, KPN, KT, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Maroc Telecom, Mauritius Telecom, NATCOM (Nigeria), OPT, Orange, Orange Cote d’Ivoire, PCCW, Singtel, Sonatel, T-Mobile, Tata Communications, Telecom Italia Sparkle, Telecom Namibia, Telefonica, Telekom Malaysia, Telkom South Africa, Telstra, Verizon and Vodafone.

It became operational in April 2002.

The SAFE cable is considered to part of a longer submarine cable that connects Europe, Africa and South-East Asia. The complete submarine cable is referred as the SAT3 / WASC / SAFE cable.

The information about the SAFE submarine cable provided in this post has been taken from TeleGeography.

• African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC)
  Headquartered in Ebène, Mauritius. Its territory includes Africa and the Indian Ocean islands.
• Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC)
  Headquartered in Brisbane, Australia. Its territory includes Asia-Pacific and Oceania.
• American Registry of Internet Numbers (ARIN)
  Headquartered in Washington D.C, USA. Its territory includes United States, Canada and some Caribbean countries.
• LACNIC, the Internet Addresses Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean. Headquartered in Montevideo, Uruguay. Its territory includes Mexico, a number of countries in the Caribbean, and all countries southward in South America.
• RIPE Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC).
  Headquartered in Amsterdam. Its territory includes Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia.

Recently, AFRINIC has faced a number of lawsuits filed in the Supreme Court of Mauritius by an entity called Cloud Innovation Ltd. The latter has its registered address in Seychelles. The lawsuits are aimed at disrupting AFRINIC's operations and thus putting at risk critical functions of the organisation.

Several Resource Members have supported AFRINIC and are continuing to do so. The latest has been the other RIRs joining hands and supporting AFRINIC through the Number Resource Organisation (NRO).

The NRO is a coordinating body for the five Regional Internet Registries. It formalises the cooperative efforts of the RIRs.

In their support towards AFRINIC, the Number Resource Organisation has addressed a letter to the Government of Mauritius, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hon. Alan Ganoo, and the Attorney General, Hon. Manish Gobin. The letter is signed by the heads of the four Regional Internet Registries (APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC and RIPE NCC).

The letter explains the role and functions of the Regional Internet Registries. It mentions the lawsuits by Cloud Innovation Ltd and how those are disrupting AFRINIC operations. I quote from letter:

It is not uncommon for a wealthy plaintiff to act in this vexatious manner. Unfortunately, it appears to us that this litigant has abused this legal process to frustrate and attempt to cause irreparable harm to the core functions of AFRINIC. For example, at least twice the courts have issued ex parte orders on behalf of this foreign domiciled litigant, whose main business is maintained outside of Africa. Those orders have severely and negatively impacted AFRINIC. The first such order froze AFRINIC’s bank accounts for an extended period of time; and while that ex parte order was lifted by the Mauritian courts once AFRINIC was able to make its case, it took nearly three months for such relief to be granted which understandably caused undue strain on the AFRINIC organization and posed a threat to the Internet ecosystem in Africa. More recently, another ex parte order was entered stopping the annual election of Directors from across Africa at AFRINIC’s Annual General Members Meeting. While we acknowledge and respect the right of complainants to seek such orders, and the Mauritian Courts to grant them, the issuance of these types of ex parte Orders have hampered the provision of a vital service necessary for Mauritius and Africa. It has placed in unnecessary and serious jeopardy the normal and routine work of Internet administration.

The NRO also urges the Mauritian government to accede to AFRINIC's request to be regarded as an international organisation. The NRO believes that this status will help with more favourable outcomes in the court cases and further strengthen AFRINIC's position as a critical one in the Internet ecosystem.

Another interesting remark is that the NRO casts doubt on whether designating Mauritius as the location for AFRINIC was wrong.

The letter is published on the NRO website and a PDF version is also available.

• AFRINIC from acting on Board Resolution bearing reference Resolution 202110.655, given that AFRINIC does not have a Board of Directors in existence as per the law,
• Eddy Kayihura from acting as ex officio director of AFRINIC, until the Board of AFRINIC is reconstituted by election.

The injunction was issued in the matter of Crystal Web (Pty) Ltd vs AFRINC & Eddy Kayihura.

Currently there are 39 court cases involving AFRINIC.

Clarification

I had a chat with folks within the AFRINIC Fellows Group and I should post a clarification that the Interim Order does not explicitly prohibits the AFRINIC CEO from exercising his duties as director in day-to-day AFRINIC operations. The order prevents the CEO from representing the AFRINIC Board in the legal cases in court.

If someone from a legal background has a different interpretation of this order, please let me know via Twitter.

The final candidate slate for the ManCom 2022 — 2023 was published on Friday 10th June on the MIXP Announce mailing list by Keessun Fokeerah (MIXP Secretariat). Electronic voting through the Helios platform started on Monday 13th June and ended on Monday 27th June.

Twelve candidates from different organisations ran in this election.

The election result was announced today, via a Zoom conference call, where several peering members and interested folks from the Internet community joined in. Keessun computed the tally on Helios and the result was available within seconds.

Election Result

Therefore, the ManCom 2022 — 2023 will be composed of Nishal Goburdhan, Dr. Amreesh Phokeer, Ranveer K. Seetaloo, Jason Leong Son, Eric Loos, Ganesh Ramalingum and Sharma Baljinder.

I congratulate the newly elected members of the MIXP ManCom and thank all those who stepped up.

Eddy Kayihura stated that they have found emails that are not in line with the purpose of the mailing list nor with the principles of the AFRINIC Code of Conduct have. Therefore, they are imposing this temporary emergency moderation.

The past few days, the Community Discuss list has seen heated arguments among a few people – with allegations and personal attacks being made.

The Order prohibits AFRINIC and its Board from:

• convening any board meeting where Dr. Abdalla Omari is present in his capacity as a director of AFRINIC, and
• from making any decision resulting in the extension of the terms of office of any of AFRINIC's elected directors.

The returnable date in court on this matter is 28 June 2022. Mr. Kayihura said that AFRINIC will not be in a position to comment further on the subject.

Dr. Abdalla Omari was elected as Board Director – Seat 6 (Eastern Africa) in the Board Elections that were held on 18 September 2020. Dr. Omari was elected to serve a two-year term.

Exactly ten days ago, after the Africa Internet Summit 2022, a Board of Directors meeting was held and Dr. Omari was appointed as Vice-Chairman of AFRINIC.

The candidates are:

• Dr. Amreesh Phokeer
• Mr. Bhaveshdeo Sreekeessoon
• Mr. Eddy Lareine
• Mr. Eric Loos
• Mr. Ganesh Ramalingum
• Mr. Jason Leong Son
• Mr. Nishal Goburdhan
• Mr. Ranveer Kumar Seetaloo
• Mr. Ravi Pudaruth
• Mr. Sharma Baljinder
• Mr. Tejas Pagooah
• Mr. Zaheer Ramjaun

The biodata of each candidate is available at www.mixp.org/#elections2022.

Voting in this election will be done electronically using Helios. Only MIXP peers can vote in this election. Instructions on how to vote will be sent by email to peering members. Electronic voting will start on Monday 13th June 2022 at 14h00 MUT and shall close on Monday 27th June 2022 at 14h00 MUT.

Each MIXP peer can vote for up to 7 persons.

Some of the above mentioned candidates introduced themselves during the MIXP session at the Africa Internet Summit 2022 at Le Méridien Hotel, last week.

The MIXP enables its peers to have settlement-free peering and keep intra-island traffic purely local. Therefore, peers do not have to pay any setup fee or other bandwidth related fees. By design, the MIXP treats all its peers equally and there is no traffic prioritisation or any filtering rules for specific participants.

I would highly recommend that network operators in Mauritius peer at the MIXP, not just to improve their network efficiency but help in making the overall Internet experience better on the island.

Representatives of Resource Members could vote on polls either on-site or online, through the my.afrinic.net members portal.

The AGMM was scheduled to start at 10h00 UTC. A few members protested that the meeting cannot start as several members had not yet receive their online meeting token. Some members reported that the token they received was not good.

The first meeting token I received was not good either and I instantly reported that to legal@afrinic.net. A few minutes later I received another token which allowed me the join the meeting.

Observers could attend the meeting on-site in a separate meeting room and the meeting was also live streamed on YouTube. Observers cannot vote in polls, comment on the proceedings or ask questions.

The meeting atmosphere remained heated during the whole time.

The meeting was adjourned for 1 hour, allowing tokens to be re-generated and sent to all registered members. However, the next few hours the meeting scene remained the same.

Motions were raised, polls were called, but the overall aim of the AGMM, in my opinion, remained unfulfilled. Firstly, the Board Elections could not be carried out due to a court injunction preventing the same. Secondly, the motion to adopt the audited financial accounts failed.

Appointments on the AFRINIC Board

Among all these upheaval, a Board of Directors meeting was held on Sunday, 5 June 2022 and Mr. Benjamin Eshun was appointed as the new Board Chairmain. Dr. Abdalla Omari was appointed as Vice-Chairman.

Disagreements followed on the AFRINIC Members mailing list. Some members claimed that the requirement of 5 directors to make a quorum could not have been fulfilled since three seats are now vacant in the Board and therefore, these appointments are not valid.

I wish the new Chairman and Vice-Chairman all the best ahead. I thank S. Moonesamy, former Board Chair and Prod. H. Youssef, former Vice-Chair for their time, guidance and leadership on the AFRINIC Board.

Many AFRINIC Resource Members look forward to this meeting and they travel every year to attend the meeting in person. Others who cannot make it can still participate and ask questions via the online conference system.

I have been attending AFRINIC Meetings since 2017. I have attended a few meetings online and two of the meetings in-person. I have attended the meetings as a Resource Member since 2019. I have never seen AFRINIC restricting Resource Members from attending the AGMM in the past.

Today, in a email the AFRINIC Legal Team informed members that due to the prevailing sanitary protocol in Mauritius, only one representative of a Resource Member will be allowed to attend the meeting in-person. However, to the astonishment and incomprehension of several members, the legal team also stated that only one representative per Resource Member will be allowed to join the meeting via the online conference system.

Several members have raised questions over this statement. I questioned the legal team about it and in response the AFRINIC Communications team stated that —

Article 12.14(9) provides, inter-alia as follows - "Corporations may act by representative. A corporate body, which is a Member, may appoint a representative to attend an Annual General Members’ Meeting on its behalf in the same manner as that in which it could appoint a proxy.”.

The AFRINIC Bylaws, from which the above article is quoted, does not state that a corporate body, which is a Member, can be represented by one person only.

I am following updates about the Board elections. The Independent Seat 7 is one for which Mauritians are eligible to run as candidate and therefore I am interested in knowing about the candidates for this seat.

Writing about the Board elections is something that would make up a full blog post and I should probably cover that separately. In this post, I am writing about something peculiar that I found in the minutes of the AFRINIC Board meetings.

On the 13th of November 2021, a special Board meeting was called, at 10h17 UTC via AFRINIC's online conferencing system. Five Board Directors and the AFRINIC CEO were present in the meeting. Two Board Directors were absent. What is particular about this meeting is one item in the agenda, mentioned as CEO Impromptu Travel.

Now, we know that AFRINIC staff travel at the organisation's expense and any travel related to AFRINIC business by the CEO will be covered by AFRINIC. However, I am curious, what was that "impromptu travel" about, that it became a Board meeting agenda item?

Well, that day the special Board meeting could not proceed due to an irregularity about the meeting's notice to Board directors.

So, still curious I checked the minutes of the next Board meeting, which was held on the 24th November 2021 at 09h10 UTC via the AFRINIC online conferencing system. This time only one Board director was absent. I looked at the agenda to see if the CEO Impromptu Travel item was brought up again but this time I find that a Board Director moved a motion of no confidence in the Chairman.

The Board director said that there is no good working relationship between the CEO and the Chair. The Board director proposed the motion of no confidence in the Chairman and to my surprise this motion was seconded by none other than the CEO himself.

I find this an extremely conflicted situation. How come the CEO seconds a motion of confidence in the Chair when the CEO himself is mentioned in the objection? If tomorrow the CEO is not in a good working relationship with another Board Chair, then what? Would there be another no confidence vote?

The timing of the motion of no confidence, right after an Impromptu Travel by the CEO being on the Board agenda, makes me think that the Board director who proposed the motion and the CEO might have colluded to oust the current Board Chair.

Nevertheless, the motion failed as the votes were four against three in favour of the Board Chair.

Seat 5 remained vacant since.

Today, in a email on the AFRINIC announcement list, the AFRINIC Board Chairman, S. Moonesamy, informed its members and the community that Sylvio Almada Cabral has been appointed as director with effect from 27 December 2021 until the next AGMM which is planned to be held in June 2022.

However, I saw two articles that I would say have misleading titles. One is from betanews.com and the other published by omgubuntu.co.uk. I'm not judging the article authors but I believe the titles should have portrayed the actual Linux Mint announcement.

OMG! Ubuntu! says big changes coming to Firefox on Linux Mint, while the actual changes mean:

• The default start page no longer points to https://www.linuxmint.com/start/
• The default search engines no longer include Linux Mint search partners (Yahoo, DuckDuckGo…) but Mozilla search partners (Google, Amazon, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ebay…)
• The default configuration switches from Mint defaults to Mozilla defaults.
• Firefox no longer includes code changes or patches from Linux Mint, Debian or Ubuntu.

The above list of changes are the exact ones posted by Clément Lefebvre and let's be honest these do not look like big changes. Anyone not liking the Firefox defaults can still change them to what they prefer and those who had made changes to the Firefox config previously, their preferences will be preserved and not overwritten.

Firefox 96.0 released

Yesterday, Firefox 96.0 was released and in an article, Phoronix talks about the browser's performance. In the same article, the author, Michael Larabel mentioned the Linux Mint/Mozilla partnership announcement without any ambiguity. I quote:

[...] Linux Mint announced on Monday they signed a partnership with Mozilla. Financial details were not disclosed but Linux Mint's Firefox build will be changing its default start page, the default search engines will change to Mozilla search partners, and other modifications for Mozilla.

I missed something around that time. Probably, something crucial about how the decision was made to terminate the membership of Cloud Innovation Ltd and to start the reclamation of number resources.

The decision to revoke Cloud Innovation Ltd's membership was made during an AFRINIC Board meeting held on the 8ᵗʰ July 2021 via the online conference system. This is mentioned in the minutes of meeting published on afrinic.net.

On page 13 of the minutes of meeting, item number 11 refers to Assisted Review. This item was asked to be included in the agenda by AFRINIC CEO, Eddy Kayihura. A resolution was passed unanimously to terminate the membership of Cloud Innovation Ltd, freeze the latter's account and to take all reasonable steps to inform users about the imminent reclamation of number resources.

It was proposed by board member, Benjamin Eshun and seconded by the CEO, Eddy Kayihura. All board members voted for this resolution.