[members-discuss] RIPE NCC Charging Scheme 2020 - Board Reasoning

Thank you, this reasoning was really missing from the original call to vote.
That helps a lot understanding of the constraints a charging scheme have to
comply to.

Bests,

Alexis Hanicotte
VelumWare SAS


On Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 6:20 PM Christian Kaufmann <exec-board at ripe.net>
wrote:

> Dear members,
>
> First of all, I'd like to thank you for the feedback we received from
> everyone so far, and special thanks to the people who gave some more
> context and explanation. Trying to arrive at a charging scheme that will
> please everyone is not an easy task.
>
> The reason the board proposes two charging schemes is because some
> members requested a real alternative and difference to the existing "one
> LIR account-one fee" version we have right now and that is more volume
> based.
>
> This came up previously in the charging scheme task force discussions
> but also from individual members via emails or through personal contact.
> Nigel and I promised at the last two GMs that we would present a new one
> before the May GM this year.
>
> So what was the board's thinking in proposing these two models?
>
> Firstly, many people like the existing model and the board believes that
> it covers the spirit of what some members want by maintaining the
> financial stability of the NCC while keeping fairness and equality in
> mind. The board also does not want a price per IP model because this
> would have tax implications (the RIPE NCC does not sell IP addresses and
> the charging scheme should reflect this) and we feel it is not in
> keeping with the idea of a membership association.
>
> We have also found in the past that having more than two options does
> not work well from a voting perspective. This would add considerable
> complexity to the voting in which resolutions must be approved by more
> than 50% of voters to be adopted.
>
> The second charging scheme option is one that the board believes offers
> a real alternative while staying away from the price per IP aspect.
>
> The board's thinking in making the Option B proposal is that every
> registry entry consumes resources such as customer support time,
> database memory, registration time, etc. regardless of the size of the
> allocation. A /24 and a /12 are not so different in this regard so we
> see this as fair in terms of the work required by the RIPE NCC to
> maintain the registry. The reason we suggest to charge IPv4 and IPv6 in
> the same way follows the same logic - there is no tax designed to move
> people to IPv6. We did not want to have a political, policy-driven
> charging scheme because the board believes this is the work of community
> rather than for the board or membership to decide on.
>
> I understand that the "volume-based" description could be seen as
> misleading and I apologise for the misunderstanding here. The proposed
> model is based on registrations and not per IP as we do not want to
> indicate that IP is a sellable product but rather the RIPE NCC should
> charge members for the registry services it provides.
>
> The new charging scheme was also not proposed so that the RIPE NCC could
> make more money - it takes the current budget and calculates backwards
> to achieve the amount required to run the RIPE NCC. It is just a
> different model to share the current cost among members.
>
> Despite concerns that were raised on this list, the board took the
> request of some members to propose a new model very seriously and we
> spent quite some time to discuss and model the current scenario by
> trying to be as fair as possible and sticking with the principles of a
> membership organisation.
>
> Again, we are very thankful for your input and the feedback on the two
> models. We will continue to monitor discussions and we will of course
> present on the Charging Scheme 2020 at the upcoming GM. We encourage you
> to register your vote so you can have the final say on the two proposals.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Christian Kaufmann
> RIPE NCC Executive Board Chairman
>
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