[address-policy-wg] Policy proposal 2009-01

Folks,

As one of the authors of this proposal I'd like to get some sort of
consensus together in the RIPE region so that we can move forward.

All other regions have reached consensus and we are the last to do so.

All other regions with the exception of Arin have adopted the policy in
it's original form. Arin has modified the policy to remove the mandatory
return of recovered address space to IANA, which effectively makes it a
different policy. 2009-01 is a global policy which means that the same
policy has to be agreed in all regions, so to all practical purposes it
is doomed already. However, we still need to decide what to do with it
in the RIPE region. To my mind there are four possibilities:

1. We adopt it in its original form thus demonstrating solidarity with
the other regions, apart from Arin.

2. We adopt the Arin form of the proposal, thus demonstrating solidarity
with Arin, but with no one else

3. We reject the proposal outright, thus demonstrating that we can't
make up our minds or that we think it will never work, or something...

4. We ask the regional authors (in this case myself and Axel) to
withdraw the proposal in this region.

Some background may be helpful here. No one seriously expected that any
address space would actually be returned as a result of this policy. It
was intended as a statement that should IPv4 address space become
available then it would be used for the greater good of all the
registries rather than those who had already had the majority of the
space already. I realise that this was a rather pious hope, but we felt
that it was worth making a statement about. 

The Arin region's position has made it impossible to make this statement
globally, but we still have the opportunity to make it here. I would
like to solicit the opinions of this working group in order to try and
put the matter to bed once and for all.

I realise I'm making rather contentious statements here, but I'm hoping
to provoke a bit of discussion. Please can the working group indicate
how they would like to move this forward.

All the best

Nigel