[members-discuss] budget 2012

On 12/10/2011 08:26, Larisa Yurkina wrote:
> I attended that GM and do confirm that the question  asked by Vladislav
> did not get answer. Someone of Executive Board members replied that the
> question was really serious and the problem should be thought out
> carefully. But it never happened. Which brings us again to the core
My recollection is that Vladislav asked a question about the 18% budget 
increase directly caused by the implementation of 2007-01 but I don't 
recall another. This may be faulty recollection or just a difficulty 
understanding the question, for which I apologise.
> problem of the RIPE NCC billing - whether we pay for number of resources
> or registration service itselff.While IPs could be calculated easily,
> the registration work have no clear measurement accuracy. So, when
> prices go up sharply people start bothering "what for?", so do I.
>
The intention of the new charging scheme was not to increase the per 
member costs in any substantial way. True, the budget has increased but 
so have the number of members so the per member cost should not have 
substantially changed. However in any change to the charging scheme 
there are going to be winners and losers. We calculated that the numbers 
of members who saw an increase would be roughly balanced by those who 
saw a decrease. I suspect that we are unlikely to hear from the ones who 
see a decrease.

Which brings us back to a fundamental question: do we want a change to 
the charging scheme? Feedback prior to this whole discussion indicated 
that we did. People complained mainly about the charge being complicated 
to calculate and difficult to understand. Complication was further 
introduced by 2007-01 and we put off implementing this for an additional 
year under the principle of least surprise.

So the board and the RIPE NCC held a series of meetings to try and 
thrash out a charging scheme that was simpler and in some sense fairer, 
also hopefully bringing some of the legacy address holders into the 
fold. We also have to work within the constraints of the Dutch tax 
system, which eliminates certain options, as we've seen. Finally we, the 
board, have a legal duty, affecting us personally (yes, that means they 
take my house away if the RIPE NCC gets into difficulty), to run the 
business of the RIPE NCC in a prudent and legal fashion.

You've seen the results in these discussions. However, if people don't 
want us to change the charging scheme, then say so, or vote against it 
at the GM. If the charging scheme is not passed in the GM then we 
continue with the current scheme. If this means we dip into our reserves 
then so be it.

Nigel

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