[members-discuss] [ncc-announce] [GM] Consultation on RIPE NCC Charging Scheme 2024

On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 02:01:06PM +0100, Andreas Grabmüller | QuarIT GmbH wrote:
>	 So, there have been many replies to this, and I'll add my two cents.
>	 
>	 RIPE is a membership organization. What we pay for is membership, not resources. Said payment of the membership fees finances RIPE's operations, and what the goal should be is a sustainable model for the future.
	 
Full ACK

I add another 2 cents:
IMHO the members should not pay for the ressources, they HOLD    ( IPs, ASNs, and so on) ,
but pay for the ressources they CONSUME ( time of the staff,  database traffic and storage, basic administration).


>	 It seems to me that the excel sheet did us a bit of a disservice. It basically prompts people to input their numbers and saying, they support the variant where they themselves pay less. And then there are the people that say, yes the tired model is good, but we need to change the thresholds to [Insert wherever they would fall into the next lower tier]. It doesn't work that way, as I assume that most of the LIRs fall into the lower tiers - and if we reduce the thresholds, it directly results in the costs for the lower tiers to increase.
	 
>	 I'm all for a category based model. It seems reasonable to me that bigger LIRs, which profit more from their membership, should be able to shoulder more of the financial burden. I also think that the categories should go higher or the distribution ratio should be changed, as I'm sure the hyper scalers or huge organizations like Deutsche Telekom wouldn't even notice the 8000 € that are the example value of the excel sheet. However we won't know what makes sense here until we have numbers (number of LIRs per size backet). I've seen the argument "yes but we have a large number of IP addresses because that's what you got back then" but if they don't use those, they should give them back, and If they use them there is cash flow associated with that.
	 
Relevant for the Service Fee should be the  the service provided to the LIRs , not the earnings of the company.  
There is a relation between the  "holded Ressources" and the income of the LIR, but also to the dynamic. Many Transfers cause more
effort than a static constitution. 

>	 As we're not buying resources but paying for the membership, I'm strictly against paying "per IP address " or something like that. For the same reason, I don't get why there is a "per ASN" fee, as those are (finite) resources like the IP addresses and I don't see the additional cost to RIPE operations. So now RIPE is selling ASN numbers? That seems hypocritical. If we want to take those into account we can always make them part of the category calculations. If there's a LIR with one /24 that needs ten ASNs and not have the budget for the membership then somebody needs to explain that to me.
	 
ACK if the category calculations are reasonable. 
It should not be in the spirit of Robin Hood (I recognized in many other postings) with the goal to rob the wealthy LIRs .

Some voices claimed, that LIRs on the IPv4 waiting list shoud pay no fee. 
If the LIR or the member, the LIR belongs to, holds or can receive other NRO-Ressources, why ?

Can anybody please explain me the sense of multiple LIRs per Membership.  Surely there may be good causes, but
my impression is, that this constellation was used in the last years by gaming the system in order to get another "last /22"
against paying a sign-up-fee. 
And even this increased income made the members and the administration blind until it stopped.


>	 Many people have criticized the growing budget of RIPE. That may be true (I don't know enough facts to say if the numbers are necessary for RIPEs mission or not), but it's a separate discussion. Whatever the new charging scheme will be, it should be defined as percentages of the budget which the membership has to approve. If the budget increases, the membership fees increase, if it decreases, so does the fee.
	 
Yes, it is another discussion. 

But: The budget was raised because of more (unplanned) membership fees ... why should be this be "one way direction" ?



Best Regards,

     Andreas Schmieja