[members-discuss] Charging scheme discussion

Hello Nigel,

I thank you for your work and the acknowledgement of the ongoing discussion.

There is one point I would like to stress, you write:

> - The Charging Scheme should not be based on IPv4 resources

This point is absolutely NOT agreed upon. There is no general consensus on it. It cannot be stated as a fact. A large part of the members think quite the opposite: the charging scheme should be mostly based on IPv4 resources allocated to each LIR.

> - Changing RIPE NCC status from non-taxable to taxable to have more 
> flexibility in the fee schedule

Also this is not generally agreed, as I said there is no direct connection between tax status and "per usage charge" as long as the "per usage charge" is still done with a model of "class of memebership" and not as a "pay per IP".

I kindly ask you to record that:
- a proposal exists to maintain a "category based" charging scheme, with a larger number of categories, in which the category is determined on the "share of exhaustible resources allocated to the LIR", and at least a significant part of the membership fee is proportional to that share.

Obviously the model would scale without problems to IPv6, if I have a /20 of IPv4 I am using "1/2^20" of the exhaustible resource, If I have a /48 of IPv6 I am using "1/2^48" of that exhaustible resource; for ASn and other exhaustible resources the principle could be similar, and a resonable part of the category assignment could be done on non-exhaustible resources (number of records in teh database, number of tickets, etc).

I would personally be in favor of even increasing RIPE budget to use more resources to promote the transition to IPv6 (training, free services, etc).

Thank you and best regards,

A.