David, You can't talk about monopoly when you refer to a non profit organisation. If I follow your line of thought then many other European organisations are also monopolies and should draw attention. In that case, we better all go to Cancun instead of the next RIPE meeting. I think the real question is how could the RIPE catter to ALL of its members. So say: 1) You have a basic fee for a basic service 2) You have options which you can subscribe to or not - for instance if you want informations on traffic then you have to participate financially. This would mean that as far as IP registering all members would pay a comon fee (which still could be separated in small, large, etc.) and that the money obtained from this would go to registery services and a bit of the overall RIPE structure. For the rest of the services, they would have to be financed by those who want them. Again what is paid by those would go into a separate slot and would finance their needs. However, if the RIPE is also recognized by EU institutions as THE central body then some grants should be obtainable from the EU to work on EU projects related to services the RIPE can offer. If such grants are obtained, then it is tax money from all EU citizens which finance some overall EU/RIPE activities which the RIPE is probably the best body in EU to do. So you'd have three things: - basic services paid by basic fees available to all - options paid by those interested available to those who pay the extra bit - overall EU/RIPE services available to all and paid by EU Pascal Julienne www.euroconnect.fr Daniel, On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 03:50:01PM +0200, Daniel Karrenberg wrote:
I could write a reply rant about the individual points in your rant but the main difference of opinion we have is about the mission of the RIPE
NCC.
This mission is broader than just being a RIR:
While I would like to agree with you, I don't think it is all that simple. To me it sounds like this whole discussion is avoiding the real problem: The RIPE NCC's RIR function is a monopoly. People who need addresses cannot go anywhere else. They have the option to become a LIR and pay for all it's services or choose not to receive any ip addresses at all. Sooner or later this is going to draw unwanted attention from authorities. Isn't it better to take preventive action now and make sure that the monopoly function is sufficiently separate of the other activities of the NCC in order to avoid this kind of problems ?!? David K. ---