* David Farmer
By asking me for a quotation, I interpreted that as to not only being about "fairness", but also about my tie of "fairness" to "operational need". The concept of "operational need" still remains in RFC 2050-bis even though the "fairness" was dropped. But I think RFC 2050-bis and "operational need" remains relevant.
I wanted to know where you'd seen this "primary definition of fairness". I don't dispute that 2050-bis mentions "operational need", but I do dispute that it says it is the "definition of fairness". If you didn't mean to make that claim I suppose we were talking past each other.
I believe you are incorrectly equating "Allocation Pool" with "Free Pool", there is nothing that says the "Allocation Pool" doesn't include resources that are available for "Re-Allocation".
If already allocated resources are to be considered as part of the allocation pool, then the pool would essentially be infinite and limitless as you can re-allocate the same addresses over and over and over and over again. So IMHO this is quite a stretch.
Furthermore, the statements in 2050-bis apply are intended to apply to the whole Internet Registry System, IANA, the RIRs, and LIRs, so even if you consider RIPE's Allocation Pool empty, the LIR's Allocation Pool isn't empty and operational need should still apply to the LIR making the Re-allocation of resources.
In the RIPE region LIRs don't allocate, they assign. (Sub-allocations being the extremely rarely used exception.) Tore