Gert Doering wrote:
You're confused. RIPE isn't funded in any way. RIPE is "all of us".
The funding goes to the RIPE NCC, which has offices, employees, and needs money to do the work that RIPE (we) ask them to do.
Then why do people (in RIPE / RIPC NCC) make a distinction ?
2. RIPE, again as a natural monopoly, does NOT offer "members" the choice of opting out of the "fluffy stuff". RIPE should, IMHO, provide registry services ONLY and base its costs on that. The other hand waving, experimental, attempted standard setting stuff should be optional and extra. At the moment, those of us who just want IPes and ASes have to pay for others to play with their academic toys. Why ?
Because the majority of the members hasn't voted against it.
Because the system is weighted in such a way that getting a vote proposed, let alone voted on by any real number of people, is difficult to impossible. This is getting recursive.
It is a natural monopoly in the way that you can't go elsewhere if you want RIPE member services. But then, how else do you want to do hierarchical distribution of a limited resource?
On the other hand, if you just want IP addresses and AS numbers, you *can* go through an ISP (but it will reduce the number of options that you have).
No you cannot, because you are then buying from your (potential) competition. RIPE/RIPE-NCC is supposed to be neutral, but is using that neutrality to assist in its own perpetualtion of the things I am complaining about. I am not looking to break the natural monopoly, but rather I am looking to move to a situation where the "monopoly" stuff is walled off from the optional stuff that RIPE/RIPE-NCC management (and friends) use to pay for their own pet projects. I am happy to pay on a cost basis for the "monopoly" stuff, but I don't get a choice. Peter Peter