On Feb 15, 2015, at 4:30 AM, Dave Cridland <dave(_at_)cridland(_dot_)net> wrote:
Charging the people we want to be contributing just doesn't seem logical to
me.
This isn't really what's happening, though. What's happening is that
corporations tend to have budgets for things like conference attendance, and
IETF is getting participants to tap those budgets to partially fund the
organization. The idea isn't really for participants who are contributing to
have to pay, and we do have scholarship programs, although it would be unusual
for a non-student to be sponsored in one of these programs.
Trying to turn the funding scheme into something "fair" isn't going to work,
because the people who really benefit from this are users of the internet, and
they don't even know who we are. They are not going to fund us. If we
really think what we are doing is important, it's not unreasonable to expect us
to try to figure out how to fund it.
The idea of a fee for off-site attendees is not to make them pay, but to
provide a way for them to get their employers to pay, or for them to pay. I
realize this is a subtle distinction, but the point is that if you think what
the IETF does is important, providing funding from an available budget is a
good way to support it, and we have not yet identified any better way to
support it. If you think that asking attendees to take on this responsibility
is inappropriate, then you should probably be thinking seriously about an
alternative proposal for how to fund the organization.