Hi Remco, 

Thanks for the explanation.

I agree that we should to have a good discussion on how we like to restructure the current policies.

The requirement to discuss that however, should not stop us to improve the current process/policies imho. 

I know from discussions with others that have done complete or partial policy re-writes that the process is tedious, painful and long .. and I personally would not like to hold my breath on it to be finished before we are going to proceed on this one … 

Your statement that the policy simplifications have been removed to the initial draft, yes there have been changes to the initial version, but one of the goals was to make it easier in a policy document to find all relevant text about transfers.

And it is not all cosmetics in it..

I strongly support your question to the Chair to see where that particular discussion needs to be done, but I would like to see that done outside the discussion of this policy review.

I will gladly make time to have that discussion, sit in on a ‘future policy task force’, together with you as the initial volunteer, the chair and others, to see what the future direction will need to be. 

Having a policy that is different than the others, might in fact be the accelerator for the discussion that it could be done different and that a refresh of the other policies might be required. . .

Regards,

Erik Bais

Van: address-policy-wg [mailto:address-policy-wg-bounces@ripe.net] Namens remco van mook
Verzonden: maandag 7 maart 2016 11:46
Aan: Erik Bais <ebais@a2b-internet.com>; pdo@ripe.net; address-policy-wg@ripe.net; chair@ripe.net
Onderwerp: Re: [address-policy-wg] 2015-04 New Draft Documents and Impact Analysis Published (RIPE Resource Transfer Policies

Dear all,

thank you Erik for providing this helpful summary - although I do not think I was quite as indefinite in my concerns as you put in your summary :)  

I'll keep it simple and straightforward this time to prevent any confusion.

1) There is no need to restructure our set of policies based on the intention of this proposed policy. The intended simplification and abbreviation from the first drafts has been all but removed in this version to fix the holes that the simplification created. 

2) That being said, I do support the intended direction of this policy proposal, but instead of creating a new separate document and ripping parts out of existing documents, I'd much prefer the change to be reflected in the existing set of documents, even if that means multiple documents having near-identical pieces of text. This is policy, not a database design.

3) A discussion is needed (and I don't even know where that discussion belongs, I'll leave that up to the RIPE chair to decide) on the structure of our set of policies, with the goal of increasing accessibility, transparency and reducing the risk of potential gaps, conflicts and duplicates.

4) Only after a conclusion of the discussion under 3) we should start entertaining policy proposals that change the nature of current policy structure.

Kind regards,

Remco

Private Internet Citizen

On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 4:31 PM Erik Bais <ebais@a2b-internet.com> wrote:

Hi,

As we are almost at the end of the current phase (after today. ) I would
like to ask the AP-WG Chairs if they agree to add at least 2 weeks
additional time to the discussion time to make sure that all pros and cons
are discussed.

Currently we are looking at an objection from Remco v. Mook ( with no hats )
that there might be some future issue on similar policy changes that might
provide a policy issue as the previous version of the draft had.

While I understand his line of thinking, I don’t think that we give the
legal team enough credit to spot future issues similar as the one in the
past draft.. I like to think there is a learning curve …
And I will also invite Remco to keep reading future policy proposals from
myself and others to make sure that there aren’t any un-intentional issues
that might be introduced in future policy.

Having said that, he also stated that there is currently nothing wrong with
the version at the table.

On the final remark of Remco, if we need to see if we need to review the
actual current structure of the policies.. I agree and I would like to have
a good discussion on that.
But that is to me a discussion outside the scope of this policy proposal.

On the suggestion of Remco and second by Tore (also with no hats), Tore
wrote :

> Remco suggested adding references to the new policy document in lieu of
> the removed sections in ripe-638, ripe-649, and ripe-655. I would not
> object to that.

This was later also agreed to by a (+1) from Sascha Luck (also without any
hats), Guy Chilton (Again .. no hats..)

And if we agree that the blunt removal of the transfer text in the current
affected policies and having a single transfer document isn't clear enough,
I'm not against adding a reference to the new proposed transfer policy
document.

The only response opposing to the current structure is Peter Koch.

Peter stated that he is :
> "Generally I'm always nervous when policy/legislation is
> "streamlined" by "just editorial changes", and also recent experience here
> would suggest extreme caution. Things get complicated when they are
> taken out of their respective context (tempus and locus)."

And I agree partially with him. Doing things with caution is something that
we are all part of here.. And I think that we have proven that we are very
careful on making certain changes.
The biggest change here is indeed the editorial one, however that is to
avoid in doing large changes while also doing editorial changes .. it was
clear to everyone that the editorial changes was desired by the majority of
the community when the initial changes / transfer policy text was written
into the policies.. and this was the 'clean-up and stream-line action.'

> At least, the work is incomplete as proposed now, simply because the
> affected policies will have to be re-published with a new number and
timestamp,
> so the (outdated) references will have to be adjusted (this includes
> evaluation and thus is more than a simple editorial change) and now
> obsolete text ought to be dealt with accordingly. The necessity to
> add normative references to a new omnibus document has already been
mentioned.

I'm reading this that Peter could live with the suggestion done by Remco for
the references.. if we are going that route..
And from what I've heard, a change like Remco suggested, would not require a
complete rehash into the PDP or redoing any phases again.

I hope that with the current summary I have given a quick view of where I
think we are ... And if Sander and Gert don't mind, I would like to ask to
extend the discussion period for 2 weeks to allow for additional comments on
this email and perhaps other insights.

Regards,
Erik Bais
Author of 2015-04 ... aka ...  The mad hatter ...