In article <01672754-1C4F-465B-B737-7E82DC5B3775(_at_)oracle(_dot_)com> you
write:
I've been told, though obviously I don't know, that the costs are
proportional. I assume it's not literally a "if we get
one additional person, it costs an additional $500". But I assume SM wasn't
proposing to get just one or a few more "open
source developer" attendees. If we're talking about just a few people it's
not worth arguing about... or doing anything
about. It would only be useful if we got a lot of such attendees.
My trip to the Berlin IETF cost me about $3300, of which the
registration fee was only $650. (The plane ticket was expensive,
since I flew from upstate NY, but the hotel was cheap because I booked
at a place a block away with a prepaid rate back in May.)
If we're going to provide financial inducements for people to come,
whether open source developers or anyone else, unless they happen to
live in the city where we're meeting, we'll need to give them cash
travel grants, not just waive the fee. The IRTF brings winners of
their research prize to the meetings to present the winning papers,
so we can look at those numbers to see what it costs.