[arin-ppml] maintenance fees for legacy space holders

[Howard, W. Lee]

Without commenting on the specifics of what the fee might be. . .

> Maybe it should be $10/year or maybe $10 every time someone changes 
> their whois or DNS record, or maybe it's a sunk cost - it's net 
> $0/year but that doesn't make it worthless. I don't know if ARIN has 
> an endownment, but maybe they have capital assets, software etc. that 
> were given to them.   
	 
In ARIN's ten year history, all of the original gifts have long since
been depreciated and replaced.  We do receive some contributions, 
mostly in the form of organizations sponsoring meetings, or coffee/
snack breaks at the meetings.  We do have a reserve of about two
years' expenses, but that's from keeping expenses below revenues, not
from initial gifts.

>  The biggest "Legacy" ARIN inherited is not the Legacy IP assignments 
> but rather it is the recurring income they receive from fees, derived 
> from administering a database of numbers (the Banks must be envious!) 

Except that ARIN is not run for profit, we only try to recover our
costs.  Prior to ARIN (someone correct me if I'm wrong, I wasn't deeply
involved then) the address registry was financially supported by the
names registry, and before that it was funded by the U.S. government.  

Lee