David, Thank you for sharing this very informative message. * David Conrad
Just to be clear: "operational need" has absolutely nothing to do with "fairness".
The former is, at least in theory, objectively verifiable by, e.g., measuring requester utilization efficiency, customer growth patterns, etc. (ignoring this has never been done and the IANA/RIR system is not capable of doing this -- the entire system relies on trust and passing the giggle test).
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An "allocation pool" is the source from which resources are taken. Once a resource is allocated, it is removed from the allocation pool. As mentioned in 2050bis, "the pools from which these resources are allocated are finite."
It is, of course, true that the allocation pool can be replenished, e.g., when someone returns a block of addresses to some part of the Internet registry system, however that is a relatively rare occurrence.
AFAICT, the question 2013-03 revolves around is whether or not the RIPE community considers the free ("allocation") pool exhausted. If it is exhausted, questions of "fairness" or "operational need" are irrelevant in allocation pool management -- the allocation pool size is zero so there is nothing to consider.
The old "all you can eat; unlimited second servings" allocation pool is without question exhausted and sized zero. This condition is permanent, as any returns/reclaims are absorbed by the "last /8" allocation pool. The last /8 pool has a very blunt definition of "operational need"; it equates it to 1024 addresses. The "giggle test" applied to this pool is essentially «do you need anything at all? yes/no». The current version of 2013-03 proposes to remove this giggle test (but not the one-size-fits-all definition of "operational need"). A few folks pointed out that it is desirable to retain the "giggle test" for philosophical and political reasons, and I've offered to amend the proposal accordingly. Based on your explanations above, I'd say that this amendment would make 2013-03 "compliant" with 2050-bis' Allocation Pool Management goal (assuming the same could be said for our current policy as well). Tore