This is a very old problem in many situations. I remember well dealing with it in the LA ACM back in the 1960's... People were objecting to paying $5.00 for dinner;-)...
One answer is to set up some kind of "Hardship Case" program to which hardship cases may submit an application for a special discounted registration fee, citing their hardship situation. I should be funded out of the registration fees paid by all the non-hardhsip attendees. I expect that very few people will admit that they are genuine hardship, so the distributed burden on those who pay the full fee will be negligible. And, yes, it would help if the hardship cases were somehow identified by badge insignia. One proper exception might should be for students, for whom I believe that some kind of "educational support" would be very good for both the students and the IETF. Well worth the subsidy cost. One of the reasons this sort of thing works, is that any attendee wanting to obtain the hardship fee has to think hard about her/his justification for claiming hardship. A limit can be set at some nominally small percentage of the registrations being allowed for hardship cases. Enjoy;-)... I will not be applying;-)...\Stef At 2:44 PM -0500 3/18/02, Theodore Tso wrote: >On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 11:44:50AM +0000, Paul Robinson wrote: > > > > 2. Individual participation will increase, and therefore the quality of the > > protocols, rafts and RFCs will increase. Would the IETF rather be pushing > > through some standard that one manufacturer really wants for their new > > router line-up, or input on a broad range of protocols from the people who > > maintain the network protocol stacks in Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/etc. > > with the emphasis being on open, secure, reliable systems? > > > >1) Individual participation can always take place on mailing lists. I >will note that a lot of the development work for Linux, FreeBSD, >NetBSD, GNOME, etc., happens on mailing lists, and in fact the Open >Source people are probably *more* used to collaborating electronically >than many people in the commercial/propietary industry space. And as >always, while the face to face contact is important, on the IETF, the >primary place place where things get done is the mailing list --- not >in the face-to-face meetings. > >2) Given that the overall cost of a meeting is at around $2000 (and >this doesn't even include the cost of the time of the person who is >attending the meeting), once you include airfare, hotel, and meals, >and the registration fee, would you really increase individual >participation by decreasing the registration fee from $425 to say >$150? I very much doubt it. Someone who can't afford $2000, probably >also won't be able to afford $1500. If you include the >salary+overhead cost of the engineer attending the meeting, the cost >of the registration really disappears into the noise. > > > OK, I'm biased, I'm with the OSS guys, but surely somebody can >see my point. > > It's not about trying to push away the corporates, it's about trying to > > create a level playing field. I, for one, completely agree with adopting a > > tiering system. > >A level playing field is one where everyone pays the same amount of >money for the value of services received. Also, I'll note that given >that individuals who don't attend the meetings, but who still >participate electronically, are basically getting the IETF Secretariat >services "for free", companies who send lots of people are in effect >already subsidizing the smaller companies who don't send as many >people. > > - Ted > >P.S. I am a Linux kernel developer, and very much in the Open Source >Software development space, and you'll notice that I'm not pushing for >an organizational subsidy....
