On Fri, 20 May 1994 17:10:43 +0100 you said:

while I don't want to join in flaming, I see some good reasons for people running a registry *now* for frowning at the financial procedures proposed or even applied unilaterally be some (only a very few?) Last Resort Registries.

I'm definitely feeling worried when a Last-Resort-Registry, run by a Service Provider *upon it's own voluntary decision* starts charging for allocating addresses. I wonder whether there isn't some incentive (at least conceavably :-) to be quite generous...

We told the IL commerical service providers that we may charge in the future. Each said that they could do it for free. We said great. Let us know when you are ready and we will *gladly* transfer over all co.il responsibility. Two weeks later we heard from them that when they sat down and figured in the machine cycles and the manpower that they couldn't do the service for free as they had thought initially but would have to charge for it. We still provide the service free of charge. We would like to conform (or in ISOish - harmonize) to whatever the overall majority feels should be done. If everyone in Europe says "do it free since that is the way it should be", we will do it for free. But in all fairness, if that is the decision to be made then I would like to see a table of all RIPE countries that provide free registry services with who provides the funding: a) government funded registry b) university funded registry c) country Internet consortium funded registry d) other Do people feel that such a table would be worthwhile to determine who is currently funding registry services in Europe today? Hank