On Jul 21, 2012, at 5:17 AM, Mike O'Connor wrote:

> on of the tricky things to coming up with a fee is the "what to include in the cost?" question.  right now, MICE is making Stone Soup out of the time, energy, thought, leadership, connections, rack space and hardware of it's members.  i bet that if one were to put a value on all of those things, we'd find that allocating that number across ports/bandwidth would result in a hefty number.  
> 

Initially, I'd say make sure that each connection is providing enough to cover the monthly costs associated with that connection (prorated share of space, power, maintenance contracts, etc.) plus a small contribution to a hardware reserve (the apportioned cost of replacing the hardware with new gear once every 5 years or so). Continued volunteer labor is sustainable for a while and is probably the best plan unless or until the exchange becomes large enough to consume at least one FTE. By that point, the incremental cost of adding an FTE divided by aggregate bandwidth probably doesn't result in a hefty fee increase.

> one question -- is MICE ever likely to get to a point where it needs new/current gear?  or can it live on cast-offs for a good long time yet?  if cast offs will work, then i'd lobby for continuing that tradition so that the cooperative can continue as a zero-cost affair for as long as possible.

MICE is already approaching the point where castoffs don't scale... Witness the current conversation around upgrading the Juniper gear.

> 
> of course, guilt-tripping the orgs that don't pull their weight (pleas for cast-off gear, more help, more participation, etc.) would remain on the table.  :-)
> 

As a general rule, this only scales to a relatively small scale and is not reliably sustainable on a long-term basis. I would like to see the future of MICE be a little more certain than is possible with this mechanism.

Owen

> mikey
> 
> PS,  here's the wikipedia version of Stone Soup for those of you who haven't heard the tale before.  
> 
> Some travelers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty cooking pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food stores with the hungry travellers. Then the travellers go to a stream and fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travellers answer that they are making "stone soup", which tastes wonderful, although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavour, which they are missing. The villager does not mind parting with a few carrots to help them out, so that gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travellers again mention their stone soup which has not reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little bit of seasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all.
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