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

Hi.

I think that the NCC could create some poll with several options and leave
only 2 ones for voting  that had the 1st and the 2nd places.

чт, 2 мая 2019 г., 17:51 Christian Kaufmann <exec-board at ripe.net>:

> Dear RIPE NCC members,
>
> The Executive Board continues to follow the discussion on the list and
> I'm happy to provide some further clarity on the charging scheme
> proposals ahead of the General Meeting in May.
>
> Firstly, there are good reasons why the Board chose to present only two
> charging scheme options rather than three or even four. The RIPE NCC's
> Articles of Association provide that all resolutions must receive over
> 50% of votes in favour of one option in order for the resolution to be
> adopted. This means that a resolution with more than two options might
> end up not having enough support (more than 50%) so we would fall back
> to the current one. As we try to make this as clear and easy as
> possible, we decided to go for two options.
>
> A way to get around this problem is to present three or more options as
> separate resolutions with standard Yes/No voting options. In fact, this
> is what happened in 2012 when the Board proposed three charging scheme
> options:
> https://www.ripe.net/participate/meetings/gm/meetings/september-2012
>
> Two of the three resolutions (Options A and C) were approved by the
> membership with the first one being the charging scheme adopted and
> subsequent resolutions disregarded. Many comments were made to the Board
> following this vote that the ordering of the resolutions had a big
> impact on which charging scheme option was adopted. For this reason, the
> Board is proposing only two options to allow a clear majority to be
> expressed in one resolution. Both options are roughly equivalent in the
> amount of revenue they would generate - the purpose of the charging
> scheme is to arrive at a way to distribute the amount required to run
> the RIPE NCC among the members.
>
> So why were these the two resolutions that the Board chose to propose
> for 2020?
>
> Option A is the current charging scheme model, and the Board favours
> this model for its simplicity and the fact that it treats all members as
> equal with equal access to services, which is how we believe a
> membership organisation should be run. The principles that the current
> charging scheme model is based on were the outcome of work by the
> Charging Scheme Task Force in 2012. In the absence of clear guidance
> from the membership on changing these principles, we prefer to stick
> with these unless we see a clear desire to change them.
>
> For Option B, the Board had a number of concerns with proposing a model
> that is based on charging per IP and volume and not per service used.
> The RIPE NCC is a not-for-profit organisation and is treated as such
> under Dutch law. In the negotiations with the Dutch tax authorities that
> established this status, a clear argument was made that the RIPE NCC is
> a membership association that does not charge for individual services or
> addresses. This is also in keeping with the view that IP addresses are a
> shared resource rather than a product, and the RIPE NCC acts as the
> steward of that resource.
>
> The Board wants this to remain the case, and if charging per resource
> jeopardises the RIPE NCC's not-for-profit membership status then this is
> not something that the Board would want to risk happening. More details
> on the RIPE NCC's tax position are available in the RIPE NCC Tax
> Governance Paper:
> https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-713
>
> The Board does not believe the charging scheme should be used to drive
> the IPv6 policies of the community.
>
> That being said, in the current charging scheme, which has been in
> effect for a number of years, IPv6 has no extra cost and yet this has
> had no discernible impact on deployment. It is also likely that from
> early 2020 IPv6 will make up the vast majority of IP resources allocated
> by the RIPE NCC.
>
> I hope this adds a further degree of clarity to the discussions. I
> realise that this is an important issue for the membership and I
> understand that not everyone will be completely satisfied by the
> proposals put forward by the Board. I also hope that you understand the
> Board's primary legal responsibility is to ensure the stability and
> continuity of the RIPE NCC.
>
> Accommodating this, and the comments and wishes we got from you, are the
> the two main goals in proposing the two options that you will be asked
> to choose between.
>
> We encourage you to continue to discuss the charging scheme options on
> the list, and we look forward to exploring them in more detail at the
> General Meeting on 22 May.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Christian Kaufmann
> RIPE NCC Executive Board Chairman
>
>
>
> On 2019-04-18 18:14, Christian Kaufmann 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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