On Jul 16, 2012, at 10:45 PM, LIR wrote:
RIPE is managing a public resource, and usage should be fair and available to all.
Who is using a lot of a resources which are rare and exausted should pay accordingly, as he/she is using a public resource and others are denied this usage because of him. So the community should have a gain from this concession.
So, very simply, IPs are like water, air: a PUBLIC resource!!!!!
Agreed, and as said the non-profit/profit issue is a formality that has nothing to to with this: it is possible to have a membership fee that is proportional with resource usage and keep a non-profit status, as well as the opposite. I find a little bit disturbing that the two things get confused. If the question is "can we have a membership fee that substantially depends on the number of public and limited resources used while keeping the nonprofit status" is turned into a "can we sell IP addresses and keep a nonprofit status" then the answer is obvious, but that's not how things are. I do not think that reiterating the profit/nonprofit thing is a good answer, as the model I proposed that substantially makes the membership fee depend on the number of limited resources a LIR uses does not imply a profit status at all, on the contrary: it is formally IDENTICAL to what RIPE did for years…. Regards, A.