[members-discuss] GM topic

On 26/04/2024, 11:11:44, "Eimantas via members-discuss" 
<members-discuss at ripe.net> wrote:
>regarding category charging scheme. Last year it was rejected, as well as proposals to increase in LIR fees were also rejected, yet increase for LIR fees is again here for voting this year,

The longer we reject increases the larger they will become, unless
costs are reduced.

We have been told costs will take some years to reduce so it is not
a surprise to see the rejected increase for inflation requested again
plus this years inflation and no zero increase option. I don't like
that but have not seen any immediate and generally acceptable
alternative.

>According to the calculations RIPE provided, using category scheme 68% of the members would have paid up to 6x times less compared to what they are paying now (1550 Eur yearly) and much less with the currently proposed scheme for 2025.

Here are some guesses why those in the lower categories did not vote
for that lower fee.

1. guilt - the new LIR that are soon to go away causing this fee
problem know they soon won't be paying but will be cashing in those
allocations and just want to quietly exit.

2. acceptance - they joined knowing the costs and what they
were to receive, think it is a fair deal, don't feel the
need to reduce their cost at others expense. This discussion is
mostly about reducing newer members fees at the expense of older
members. Smaller older members would have benefited but maybe they
were not unhappy.

3. planning - knowing that most of the exiting LIRs will be in the
same lower categories as themselves they calculated that their
category would have a huge reduction in members, say -50% in the
lowest categories, and thus in future years they will face a huge
increase in cost, +100%, which would be higher than the flat feee
model. Maybe future years would avoid that and the categories would
be calculated differently, it was too much to risk and find out.

4. don't care - they are busy making lots of money to cover this and
many other larger costs of doing business.

5. ignorance - screw those guys, they can't even be bothered to
get involved so why should we vote them a saving.

>I think RIPE did poor job to inform majority of the members about the benefits of the new charging scheme and how much exactly they would pay next year with this scheme.

I agree, any model should come with estimates of cost for your LIR,
not a calculator you have to find and correctly input your data.

Any model predicated on pricing members into releasing v4 space
back to RIPE is bogus and so should be discounted. The best hope
is they will sell/lease some, there is already adequate available
to buy/lease so why should RIPE intervene in the market?

Eventually in a v6 world there will be very few categories so
we will be back to the current model.

>Only 805 ( I think 35% of all voters) voted for category option when there were 13,710 who would have benefited from this charging scheme significantly including having stability for RIPE budget for upcoming years. Also category 4 seems to be not that much of increase compared to current RIPE proposals so the benefiters % would go even higher this year.

3. above is the reason I didn't vote for the category model - it would
have instantly increased our costs lots even though we don't have
much and exposed us to much larger increases in later years as LIR
close.

Any new category model must not repeat such peril. With the flat
model the cost of exiting LIR is shared equally not heaped on a
subset of members, flat returns us to where we were pre expansion,
if we reduce the budget.

>Last year less than 10% of total members voted, where is the voice from the other 90% and why the decisions important like these are made with such a small amount of votes?

Many of us never vote unless there is something that will badly
affect us. We are largely happy with what RIPE do and trust they
will look after things for us. We do not want lots of drama or
risk, there is enough of that elsewhere to deal with.
ktnx, The Silent Majority.

>Shouldn't these important votes have minimum 40-50% of the members votes

That seems impractical.

brandon