It would be entirely normal for a body which is not primarily about earning revenue, to incur the risk of LOSING revenue in a significant change from f2f -> online, in order to understand the nature of the problem. This would not be incorrect. Its a decision an LLC can take: incur some costs, to understand your problem. Its a capped risk. It cannot exceed the loss of revenue of the total number of IETF participants. (that is btw a loss of income, not necessarily a loss running the meeting. So it could arguably be called an opportunty cost more than a loss) So, I would actually expect an un-capped fee waiver to be available and to base the worst-case risk side of 'how many waivers do we need to fund' on how many people elect to take the option. I haven't yet seen a cost model which explains how the free participants remotely represent a cost to the IETF to run. Is there a volume based charge in Meetcho? Is there a volume based cost to the infrastructure to run the web-casting? I note that every meeting I have attended online this year (RIPE, DNS OARC32 (I am on the board) and the up-coming ICANN RoW) have been entirely free. Two of the three examples would normally charge. I simply don't understand how either the LLC or any other body decided there had to be a limit on "free" noting that many of us expect to pay, but an uncounted number of us might suffer financial hardship which in previous times, was unassessed and hidden in 'remote participation is free' models. I think this is a huge departure from our norms. I would have expected this to be discussed. -G
