Funding - what about the second year?

[John LeRoy Crain]

 Stephen Satchell <satchell at ACCUTEK.COM> writes:
 * At 8:53 PM -0800 2/17/97, David R. Conrad wrote:
 
 * The reason to lower fees later is because your budget model was wrong and
 * you charged too much in the beginning.   I know I'm beginning to sound like
 * a broken record, but we NEED the proposed budget NOW so that we can see
 * where the money is coming from (revenue projections) and where the money is
 * going (expenses).


The reason that the RIPE prices were lowered was partially because of 
the extra growth in the Internet, meaning more registries than expected.

Now if you can guarantee how the Internet will grow in the next three years 
so that people can budgetize correctly for that length of time, I'm sure
that everybody would find it useful. ARIN must be funded and cannot risk being
underfunded, a one year budget can ensure that they can adjust in 12 months
to the situation at that point in time. A three year budget that guarantees 
them enough funding would seem to me very difficult to make while keeping the
prices down to a realistic level. At the RIPE NCC we keep getting more 
registries but we don't have any way of knowing how long this growth will 
continue. What happens if we budgetise for three years and the growth slows, 
stops or even turns around in year two, I think then the contributors would
be telling us we should have budgetised for one year.

Of course I'm not an economist so I could be wrong. 

 * 
 * As for paying $1000 to participate in ARIN, don't count on me.  I don't
 * have that kind of money to throw around.  If on the off chance you want me
 * to continue to provide input to the process you will have to find a way to
 * do it without bankrupting me.  And don't expect my company, Motorola, to be
 * willing to fork over that kind of money for me to participate in ARIN.
 * Won't happen.
 
If your company doesn't consider it important to be involved, that's their 
choice. 

It is a shame that individuals who wish to be involved in this and don't have
a $1000 that they can miss will miss out.  I think this will be a minority,
most people will be involved for reasons of business, for yourself your
company would have decided it's not important to your business. I guess it's 
like anything in life there are always those who don't have the resources
to contribute even when their contribution could be useful. 


John Crain
RIPE NCC
(These are my opinions and nobody elses, you want opinions get your own:-)