[members-discuss] GM topic

Hello Simon, everyone,

I hardly ever take part in the administrative life of the RIPE. I 
represent a small French LIR, which manages 1 AS and a few thousand IPs.
When I see the RIPE invoices arrive every year, I always ask the same 
question: Why do I have to pay for a service I never use?

Let's be honest! Apart from a few updates to the RIPE DB each year, I 
never use RIPE services, I never use ATLAS services, I never open a ticket.

Is the ~1600 € / year justified by the services provided? Clearly not. 
But that's not RIPE's fault! It's simply because the services offered 
are of absolutely no use to me in my business life.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm particularly opposed to any increase in 
membership fees or operating costs. We get increases and new taxes 
almost every day in France because they haven't been able to manage a 
national budget properly, so don't expect the management associations to 
do the same!

How would an increase be justified? An increase in payroll costs? Lay 
off! Increase technical costs? Cut machines! Increase rent? Move out!

I wish board members could finally accept that a budget can also be reduced.

As for the contribution system, I like the model proposed earlier on 
this list. The idea is that holders with more than 25 kIP should pay 
more than at present, and those with less should pay less.
This also has the merit of pushing ipv6 a little and not killing off the 
small LIRs who are doing what they can to adopt it.

I'd also like to point out that the language barrier is particularly 
complicated to manage, because these discussions are technical, and the 
stakes are high. Not everyone will take the trouble to translate each 
e-mail individually. And yet, it helps enormously to understand what's 
at stake.
If the RIPE wanted to spend its money wisely, it would be useful, for 
example, if all official communications were translated into all EU 
languages!

I don't know if this reply will provide any food for thought for all the 
members registered here, but I hope that the opinion of a small 
French-speaking LIR can be taken into account.

Best regards,
Jérémy Martin

(translate by deepl.com, sorry for syntax errors...).

Le 30/04/2024 à 13:55, Simon-Jan Haytink a écrit :
>
> Dear Mihail, all,Defining what exactly a diverse group is will be 
> difficult. There are 20,000 members and over 5,000 subscribed to this 
> list, with many obviously following closely. It is also interesting to 
> note that over 400 people have unsubscribed from the members-discuss 
> list in this month alone. Some are very committed to this topic, while 
> others are actively removing themselves from the conversation. This 
> highlights how difficult it can be to reach a good consensus or make 
> sure all members are engaged on the topics that matter.
>
> But clearly there are strong opinions from a large set of members that 
> we can’t ignore. Translating this into a good Charging Scheme for all 
> members will still be a difficult task, and one that we will have to 
> invest a lot of time and effort into together with the membership. And 
> I completely agree that we should not be afraid to discuss our budget 
> or other things that the members want to discuss. In fact, that 
> discussion is vital if we are to arrive at a good model.
>
> Every year during the Activity Plan & Budget process, we do everything 
> we can to get input from our members, but it seems this discussion 
> mainly takes place when we discuss the Charging Scheme. As a financial 
> person, I do understand why, as it can be seen as a boundary for the 
> Cost Budget. But the intent of the Charging Scheme is to ensure 
> sufficient revenue to execute our committed activities. Our Activity 
> Plan & Budget defines these activities. The redistribution vote 
> required by our governance is the safeguard to ensure an excess of 
> funds can be returned to our members (it can also ensure a shortage of 
> funds is charged to our members). As CFO, I will do what I can to 
> ensure we remain conservative and reasonable, but at the same time, we 
> must ensure we have sufficient funds.
>
> Active participation is something that is always high on the agenda of 
> the RIPE NCC. But I do want to highlight the position we are currently 
> in. We see requests to ensure active engagement, and to give more 
> training and carry out communication in local languages, but to 
> increase these efforts, which we are more than willing to do, we need 
> to ensure we have sufficient funds. We also have priorities such as 
> enhancing the security of the Registry and members’ resources and 
> accommodating the greatly increased complexity in the registry. In 
> short, we are being asked to do significantly more while significantly 
> cutting costs, so something will have to give somewhere.
>
> I do think this is a challenge every organisation faces, whether it’s 
> a for-profit company or a not-for-profit company. We have accepted 
> this challenge and will continue to focus on cost efficiency, but to 
> be successful in this challenge we also need a stable association, and 
> financial uncertainty does not help stability.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Simon-Jan HaytinkRIPE NCC, CFO
>
> On 26/04/2024 10:40, Mihail Fedorov wrote:
>> Hello Simon!
>>
>> I appreciate your work and thanks for noticing this discussion.
>>
>> You’re mentioning a significant and diverse group of members. As you can see in proposal just overnight it was signed by 450 LIRs from different places in the whole region, big and small. Does it count as diverse group? I honestly believe it’s majority of those who actually read this list.
>>
>> Member proposal is formed as simple “do not change” because current logic clearly prohibits to propose anything else. I thinks it’s terrible on its own.
>>
>> Proposed by board charging scheme was posted as a draft just recently and got hundreds of disagreements instantly. This clearly indicates it needs to be reworked. Yet it wasn’t done. Me, and many other members want to see clear answer why it wasn’t even tried.
>>
>> Reasoning behind not doing anything is absurd:
>>
>> 1. If members didn’t voted for this last year - you should not remove such option this year. Maybe they changed their mind?  After all if members disagree with anything other proposed they still can vote for original scheme.
>>
>> 2. Members clearly indicated that RIPE budget decrease MUST be discussed. It’s always sounds scary, but this happens and there is no shame in discussing that.
>>
>> Pardon my wording, but I still see no clear reason why different scheme wasn’t worked, only friendly responses without intent to do something. Sometimes not even friendly, just statements that it won’t be discussed.
>>
>> If you state that board is not opposed to different charging scheme or budget cuts - please clearly indicate why it was not done.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>>> On 26 Apr 2024, at 10:59, Simon-Jan Haytink<simonjh at ripe.net>  wrote:
>>>
>>> Simon
>
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