> 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/