[members-discuss] [ncc-announce] [GM] Consultation on RIPE NCC Charging Scheme

On 2023-04-28 15:17, Paul Lewis wrote:

> I feel that discussion is important otherwise nothing can potentially 
> change really. It shouldn't matter whether you're a small LIR, hobby 
> enthusiast or an enterprise, every voice matters. I feel that your 
> message sort of comes across as saying that smallest LIRs and hobby 
> enthusiasts are unimportant.
> 
> ---
> Regards,
> Paul Lewis.
> 
> On 2023-04-26 18:07, Michel Lanners wrote:
> 
> All,
> 
> Is the amount of money that is at stake here, i.e. the individual 
> member fee, worth all this discussion? I don't want to sound 
> disrespectful against members that operate on tight budgets. But except 
> for the smallest LIRs and hobby enthusiasts, the annual fee that we are 
> discussing should be, excuse the term, peanuts in any case.
> 
> Of course one can discuss RIPE NCC budget and the value of services 
> this budget produces.
> 
> But I don't like it when individual services are questioned for the 
> various reasons, mostly because they are not important to the ones or 
> the others.
> 
> RIPE is about a community effort, and RIPE NCC's services should 
> benefit the community as a whole - not individual members. For that 
> reason member fees were traditionally equal for all. Whether you use 
> all of the services, or only a subset. As long as the fee is 
> sufficiently low, you should not care. And I feel it still is 
> sufficiently low.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Michel LANNERS
> CIO at LU-CIX Management G.I.E.
> --
> Mail: michel.lanners at lu-cix.lu
> Phone: (+352) 28 99 29 92-81
> LU-CIX Management G.I.E.
> 202, Z.A.E. Wolser F
> L-3290 Bettembourg
> lu-cix.lu [1]
> luxembourg-internet-days.com [2]
> lunog.lu [3]
> 
> On 26 Apr 2023, at 11:47, Kaj Niemi <kajtzu at basen.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> It would probably be better to not single out a specific service to get 
> rid of just like that but instead objectively look at the services NCC 
> provides _and should provide as part of the service commitment to its 
> membership._ To figure out whether they really are something a RIR 
> should do as part of its _basic services for LIRs_ or services that are 
> value-add. Some of these services can be categorized as being in the 
> interest of the public, like the K-root.
> 
> On the other hand, I don't think anything prohibits charging for other 
> services, if NCC truly wanted. Some of the charging models want to 
> introduce transfer fees, for example, and I do believe people pay for 
> RIPE meetings, too.
> 
> Thinking creatively about some of the things mentioned:
> 
> * [...]
> 
> * Network visibility
> 
> *
> 
> * According to NCC there are about 10k atlas probes, there is RIS, etc. 
> and people seem to find the data produced genuinely useful
> 
> * If the data is useful, it should be possible to quantify its value
> 
> * if there is value it should be possible to charge for it
> 
> * Suggestion: produce a plan that demonstrates roadmap to breakeven of 
> spent opex for the last X years
> 
> As a side benefit one would have also diversify revenue away from being 
> 98% to 90% or so membership fees but at least it would be a start.
> 
> Now, if the answers are "we cannot charge for it, people will hate us 
> for being greedy", "nobody would ever pay for this", "how can we 
> convince someone to buy when we have given it for free in the past" - I 
> think the issue is again that either people do not truly understand the 
> value of the service or by itself is not valuable enough to anyone. The 
> world is full of obscure sources of data for almost any industry 
> charging for their produced/collected data, why should the networking 
> industry be any different? I do not believe it is. In any case, why 
> should the membership pay for such things?
> 
> Alternatively, one could have "LIR services" package and a "the 
> megacombo supersized LIR services and extra" package. Those who want 
> something beyond the basics can elect to pay for the extra. Of course, 
> for an organization that would sell SaaS and data, the data should be 
> valuable enough that people pay for it year after year. And the 
> services must then be relevant enough that people elect also to pay for 
> them year after year, one cannot simply invent internal projects to 
> keep busy while the money comes in. If one looks at the annual guides, 
> much of the time seems to be spent on internal projects to improve 
> something.
> 
> The ugly truth, however, is that both potentially monetizable services 
> will not be able to cover any larger deficits fees from decreasing 
> membership numbers for quite some years even if they were run with a 
> criterion to at least break even on direct costs. Given enough support 
> a membership desiring to pay less, it would leave as the alternative to 
> _reduce_ _expenditure_ in various ways. What normal companies do when 
> times are tough is first to get rid of consultants. In this case it 
> would reduce costs per member by 255 euro annually or on an annual 
> budgetary level by 12.75%. I'm reasonably sure the almost 200 people 
> working full time can handle things. Similarly, does everyone need to 
> be in Amsterdam and does NCC need to market rates? EU is a large market 
> and there are always alternatives to nearshore within EU. Does NCC 
> really need to have an office in Dubai? Just to name a few.
> 
> Lastly, perhaps all of these are great things that should be paid by 
> the membership? Perhaps the real issue at hand is that the 22+ folks in 
> Community Building and Member Engagement, spending 6 million euro 
> inside the External Engagement and Community unit with 42 FTEs spending 
> about 10 million euro annually - 1/4th of the whole budget - is not 
> able to explain the wonderful benefits to us, so instead some of us 
> send emails on members-discuss list and are seemingly unhappy with the 
> direction things are going? Yeah, dunno, always a possibility.
> 
> Kaj
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: members-discuss <members-discuss-bounces at ripe.net> On Behalf Of 
> Randy Bush
> Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2023 04:53
> To: Paul Newton <paul.newton at f4rn.org.uk>
> Cc: Sander Steffann <sander at steffann.nl>; Gert Doering 
> <gert at space.net>; <members-discuss at ripe.net> <members-discuss at ripe.net>
> Subject: Re: [members-discuss] [ncc-announce] [GM] Consultation on RIPE 
> NCC Charging Scheme
> 
>> It's beginning to look like rearranging deck chairs on the
>> Titanic. Spot the odd one out (if I've gathered the data correctly)
>> AFRINIC.   $6m
>> LACNIC. $10m
>> APNIC. $22.5m
>> ARIN. $24m
>> RIPE NCC. EUR42 = $46m
> 
> now list the services provided to operators by each.  you wanna get rid
> of ris, atlas, many dns services, new engineer education, ...?
> 
> to compare you will have to fold caida's budget into arin's.  oh, and
> route views's too.
> 
> this discussion sometimes reminds me of the US house of representatives
> debt ceiling discussion.  let's cut everything that does not benefit my
> state, or fossil fuels.
> 
> i am a ripe member because of the real services, open community, etc.
> ya gets what ya pay for.  tanstaafl.
> 
> randy
> 
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Links:
------
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