I'm more worried about the differential impact raising fees would
have - it would mean very little for the "professional
standardizers" from the vendors, but would have a negative effect
on the self-funded, the academics and other groups that help us
preserve a multifaceted perspective on what the Internet is and
should be.
We already subsidize student fees (a Good Thing, I think). Why not
make this a little more general...
So, we raise the fees to cover our expenses, but continue to offer
the possibility of a break by applying for a reduced rate from some
"fee grant fund". (And, there would be several well-known
categories of folk who would be helped: academics, students,
self-funded, folks from non-profits, whatever) This notion works for
student travel grants for some academic conferences.
The notion would be that we acknowledge that we need to raise more
money to cover costs -- but, that we do not want to preclude the
*very* valuable input of certain classes of participants in doing
so.
(And, this would be after a through scrubbing of the books to figure
out if we can live without terminals in the terminal room, or
cookies in the afternoon, or whatever.)
allman
--
Mark Allman -- NASA GRC/BBN -- http://roland.grc.nasa.gov/~mallman/