Hi Vincent, there's the Annual LF membership fee and the Annual DPDK participation fee. If a company is already an LF member, then there's no LF membership fee and it's just the annual DPDK participation fee.
As I understand it there's been discussion that the DPDK Governing Board might want to setup a test lab. I have no idea what the requirements or cost of that would be and if it would be managed by a member (or members) or the LF. Some projects have a member who steps up to run infrastructure for a project, and some want it in the community's control. We don't care where/how it's done but if the LF is asked to do it, we have to cover our costs.
Regarding a lab, this group should also consider that FD.io already has a test lab that does what I'm guessing the DPDK community wants - it would seem to me a huge waste to have largely the same companies setup two labs doing the same thing. This was a big part of my original suggestion of just working on DPDK under FD.io, but as I understand it some were uncomfortable with that. I'm not aware of the issues, but objectively looking at this from a distance I still think that would be a very wise option to consider. The infrastructure, the organization, funding and membership are already there and I think DPDK could operate fairly well on its own with perhaps some changes to the technical governance if there are concerns. I'll leave my suggestion at that for now, but I know the people funding these projects are not going to be pleased to hear they're being asked to fund two nearly identical projects. If not merging the projects, then perhaps consider at least splitting the cost of infrastructure or a test lab...
As for events, if the Governing Board decides to host an event, some projects pay for events out of the membership fees and that's it, some have sponsorships or attendance fees. That's all up to the group that makes the decision.
I hope this helps clarify,
Mike