From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Fri May 06 2005 - 15:51:40 CDT
From: "Rick McGowan" <rick@unicode.org>
> Announcement of Changes to the Unicode Membership structure
>
> Responding to its members, the Unicode Consortium has been expanding its
> role to more fully cover all aspects of software internationalization.
> This
> is reflected in increased costs to the Consortium, which require an
> increase in fees. To help ameliorate the effects of this, the Consortium
> is
> adding a new level of membership and slightly modifying the existing ones.
>
> To provide a smoother transition to the new fees for members, the
> Consortium is also making a special offer available until July 31. Current
> and new members may choose to join, renew, or extend their membership by
> one or more years at the current lower rate.
>
> For more information see http://www.unicode.org/press/change.html
Instead of just increasing the prices, why not adding more intermediate
levels that would allow some existing members to get additional rights, or
even individual people to contribute too (the raise from $120 o $150 is not
fun for individual users, and will probably only lower the number of
subscribing individual people).
OK you've added the "INSTITUTIONAL" membership but raised the participation
from $9500 to $12000, i.e. the previous price for FULL membership; if those
institutions could not find the money to spend $12000 in the past and become
FULL members, this change will not please them, and they will finally decide
to either retire from the project, instead of degrading their membership to
only "SUPPORTING" at now $7500 (but with no vote even in technical
commitees).
So why not instead adding a "DONATOR" level, with a small fee about $30 to
$50, that many individual could buy without necessarily buy a "INDIVIDUAL"
membership at $120 ?
Also Unicode now hosts several distinct projects, and this may participate
to the raise of expenses. Why not dividing the membership for these extra
projects (such as the CLDR and ISO15924) by providing them with some
financial autonomy? Are all Unicode members interested in getting vote
rights for these extra internationalization projects?
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