Jim, thank you for your reply. On Jul 28, 2011, at 11:46, Jim Reid <jim@rfc1035.com> wrote:
On 28 Jul 2011, at 09:35, Martin Millnert wrote:
this message of yours explains for me that you have not really understood why or what people are having issues with, with these issues.
With respect Martin, you couldn't be more wrong. And anyway the next steps are not about what I might or might not understand or the issues raised in the last-minute objections to 2008-08. It's also not about "cheating the policy process" either. Nobody has suggested it was. It's about reconciling two (three?) mutually exclusive community decisions.
Fair enough. Your message had a bias towards "this needs to pass, obstacles go away!", that I may have misinterpreted then.
We have a situation where the membership has authorised the NCC to develop an address certification system. This has been going on for years. It was the settled will of RIPE too. [Though that goes back to the days before the PDP existed.] We've all taken a punt that by the time this system was ready, there would be a consensus policy for it in place. 2008-08 is now dead. But the current mandate to the NCC is still in effect. A vote of the membership is needed to change that mandate. In my opinion, this is also the least bad way to proceed.
If the prototype development does not auto-expire when there is no supporting policy, that seems a bit like a flaw in the original design here, to me. Likewise, can the membership with a simple majority vote overrule the PDP on the matter? (or without the corresponding PDP, if the policy proposed then is different than 2008-08.) I'm not verse enough in RIPE NCC procedures to know this. It does seem strange that a simple majority vote could override a PDP decision, since the requirements on consensus in the PDP is pretty far from simple majority. That is what I mean would be cheating and would seriously undermine the authority of the policy. It does then appear sensible to me that a new policy (which it is, Gert) still has to go through the PDP, and the AGM-mandated bullet point prototype development would at some time finish (working well enough qualifies), ending that mandate. And once that mandate has ended, a new mandate can still not put it into effect before consensus can be reached in a corresponding PDP.
Please note I did not say what that decision should be. Again.
While you're right in theory to say we could start all over again and come up with a new address certification policy, I doubt it will work in practice. Positions seem too entrenched on all sides to find a compromise. I wonder too if consensus is now possible or if that can be reached in a reasonable amount of time. 2008-08 chugged along for 3 years and was apparently non-controversial.
I think Mr Blessing pointed out the core issue, yet unsolved. Until it is solved (my reading on the major difference of abusive risk tolerance), until there is a consensus, the default action is of course to not enact a new policy. Memories of the recent 2008-08 debate here ought to be fresh enough that if a new proposal comes through (say roughly in time for the next AGM), where these issues have been addressed, the debate need not restart from scratch. Best regards, Martin