[members-discuss] Charging scheme discussion

Hi,

On Jul 24, 2012, at 9:38 PM, Rob Golding wrote:
> "count" of ip's within a block - no, it's back to them being a "commodity"
> (altering the tax status) 

This is wrong and leads to misinformation.

Until last year RIPE membership had a cost depending on a class model (large, small, extra large, etc), which on its behalf depended on the number of allocated resources. Until last year (and now, so far) RIPE was classified as non-profit. These are facts.

So it IS POSSIBLE to have a membership fee that depends on the number of allocated resources without changing the non-profit status, and an example has been provided.

Everybody understands that RIPE cannot "sell" address space, everybody understands that RIPE can have different classes of membership which different fees, where the class of membership depends on the number of allocated resources and the fee is effectively proportional to that, all this maintaining a non-profit status.

Continuing to confuse these two issues, which have nothing to do each with the other, sounds like plain misinformation: The "Tax issue" is not an issue, unless further information showing the opposite is presented. 

Regards,

A.